


Where It Wasn't Supposed To Be

by musiclvr1112



Series: Hate Square [1]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: AU, Aged-Up Character(s), Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angry Sex, Angst, Bee Miraculous, Blatantly ignores season 2, But pretty close, Buzzkill, Chlonath Week, Day 6, Day 7, Drunk Sex, Emotional Turmoil, Erections, Explicit Language, F/M, Flirting, Friends With Benefits, Grinding, Groping, Halsey - Freeform, Heartbreak, I changed the title, I hate that I love you, I'm adding tags as I go, Kissing, Making Out, Mild Sexual Content, NSFW, Non-Explicit Sex, Oh god, Oops, Peacock Miraculous, Peacock Nathanaël Kurtzberg, Pollen, Sexual Tension, THIS GOT SO DEPRESSING, What Have I Done, also, and a fic called, and turned into this monster of a fic, are perf, based off some bomb ass art by, basically smut, because it's so freaking long, but i love it, by, evil paon, hate square, hopeless fountain kingdom, i love that i hate you, if you're looking for good music to listen to while reading, inner conflict, innocent eyes beware, is pretty much perfect for this fic, karawek, le paon works for papillon, like a lot, on tumblr, or hawkmoth, outer conflict, powerdragonmoon, sorry for the confusion, started as a part of, steam, the aesthetic and the content, the entire album of, this was supposed to be a oneshot, used to be called, whatever you call him, writing this is killing me
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-21
Updated: 2018-08-04
Packaged: 2018-11-16 22:02:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11261883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musiclvr1112/pseuds/musiclvr1112
Summary: An AU in which Chloé is Queen Bee and Nathaniel is a villainous Le Paon. Star-crossed lovers, if you will.Completely inspired bykarawek'samazing artworkof these two as well aspowerdragonmoon's awesome ficBuzzkill. If you haven't already, go check those out, they're fantastic.





	1. I hate that I love you/I love that I hate you

**Author's Note:**

> In case you missed it in the tags, THIS WORK CONTAINS SEXUAL CONTENT. While it is not quite Explicit, it gets damn close, and while the smut isn't the focus of the work, it also can't be avoided if you want to read it. So if you're not comfortable reading sexual content, this is not the fic for you.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [What a wicked game you play, to make me feel this way.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3itLccui18)
> 
> [I want you so much, but I hate your guts, I hate you.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtcfTgDTuOM)

 

The gloved hands on the skin of her waist were gone in a shower of blue, leaving warm, rough, callused hands in their place. She briefly wondered what Le Paon did during the day to warrant such calluses, but quickly pushed such thoughts from her head. She didn’t want to know who he was. She was _dying_ to know who he was, but she didn’t want to. She couldn’t. Because the day that she knew was the day it was over.

It had started with a mere distraction. Grabbing fistfuls of his pretty red hair and locking lips so that the bug and the cat could swoop in and finish the akuma. Needless to say that stunt only worked once, but boy had it _worked_. It’s not like she had missed the way he acted around her. The way his disposition changed when she was around. The way his eyes raked her body as she fought. The way he smirked at each of her challenges. And she definitely didn’t miss the way their antagonizing banter had quickly evolved into antagonizing flirting after their very first fight.

She knew of course that kissing him would work, at least just enough for the others to end the fight. But she hadn’t expected _that_.

Le Paon’s reaction to her kiss had been so willing, so hungry, so _full_ that she’d almost lost herself in it. It was just one kiss, but she’d be lying if she said it hadn’t absolutely blown her away. If it weren’t for the shouted ‘miraculous ladybug!’ she might have forgotten where she was altogether.

And then she had left. Parted from his kiss without another word, not even risking a glance at his face. She didn’t want to know how he felt. She couldn’t let herself know. And she definitely couldn’t let him know how absolutely breathtaking it had been for her.

His shirt was soon lost on the floor somewhere and the heat of his skin permeated the fabric of her top. He bit into her neck hard enough that there would probably be teeth marks later, and it only made her hotter. It was dangerous to leave marks. If they so much as passed each other on the street, they might know because of them. But for now, she didn’t care. She wanted to be marked by him. She wanted proof of his touch on her skin. She wanted _him_.

She locked her lips on his nape and sucked hard, relishing in the way his fingers dug deeper into her flesh, the way he twitched against her hip, and most of all the way he groaned. She wanted to mark him too. She wanted everyone in his civilian life to know that he was _hers_ , even if she couldn’t officially stake her claim on him. This was her claim. This was her mark. He was her territory.

It had only gotten worse when an akumatized circus freak had trapped them together, tied up in a position that left nothing to the imagination. She had been flying straight for him, charging him in an effort to drive him back as Volpina went for the akuma, when suddenly performance ribbons had ensnared her, binding her tight against him. Her body was flush against his, legs slightly parted to hug his hips, and her arms—having been raised to attack—were trapped angled up, resting on his shoulders. Worst of all, his hands had just been reaching out to stop her, and had gotten trapped on her waist just above her hip bone. She could feel every muscle strain and flex as he tried in vain to wriggle free. Even worse, she was left with only two options of head positioning: resting against his shoulder or staring him straight in the eye, close enough to feel his breath. She elected the latter.

“Doesn’t she know you’re on her team?” she bit, hating the way he seemed almost delighted in their predicament.

“Akumas don’t have teams,” he responded, finally giving up on freeing himself and letting his body relax. She hadn’t thought it possible, but he somehow settled even closer to her, body melting against hers so perfectly she wondered how two people could be so complementary yet so wrong. “All they hear is ‘get the miraculous’ echo through their heads and we all become targets. Besides,” he smirked and leaned just the slightest bit closer to her, turning on his usual charm, “it’s almost like she’s wing manning for me.”

She turned on her own charm in return. “You know, if you wanted my body pressed against you so badly,” she leaned in to whisper in his ear, “you could have just asked.” Something pressed against her thigh. His fingers on her waist tightened their grip just the slightest bit. His breathing was steady—too steady, as if he was trying to control it. She smirked, despite herself. “Bothered, Paon?” He huffed a half-hearted laugh, but she didn’t miss the way he shivered against her. Pressed so close together, he could hide nothing from her.

“Tease,” he remarked.

“ _Prick_ ,” she whispered. Her lips brushed his ear as she spoke the word and the pressure between her legs grew immediately.

“You know,” he murmured, angling his head down into the crook of her neck, “two can play at that game.” She closed her eyes, trying in vain to deny herself the pleasure of his touch. Why was she like this? She could go to a bar and find anyone to have in her bed by that night if she wanted—hell, she could even find someone _more_ problematic than him if she tried hard enough—so why couldn’t she get _him_ out of her system? Months had passed since that fleeting kiss and still she occasionally awoke in the middle of the night, hot from the sheer memory of it. It wasn’t fair. Of all the hot guys, all the smartasses, all the douchebags in the world that she probably shouldn’t date, she just had to be hung up on this one.

He didn’t do much, just barely skimmed his lips along her skin, his breath trickling down her spine, but it was enough to drive her absolutely insane. She kept her breathing even, and hoped beyond hope that he would never know the effect he had on her. She just had to wait until the fight was over. The others would stop that circus freak and she would be apart from him again. She would be cold, but at least she would be able to think clearly.

“I see right through you, you know.” Her eyes opened wide. He chuckled. “You don’t even know the peacock’s abilities do you?” Queen Bee froze as he officially crossed that unspoken line they had drawn ages ago—the line dividing playful flirtation from outright contact. His lips brushed butterfly kisses along her neck, each individual one sending shivers down her spine. “I know how much you like that. I can feel it. Just like I felt the passion in your kiss.” She closed her eyes in defeat. He knew. He knew and she had no escape. Then his voice dropped to the most quiet of whispers, as if trying to ensure that only she heard him. As if sharing a secret just between them. “I think about it too, Bee.” Her body went rigid. “I want to kiss you too.”

Le Paon pulled his head back to look at her and she could do nothing but meet his eyes. His smirk was gone. His attitude was gone. The mischief that constantly shined in his eyes—gone.

This wasn’t a game.

She watched him, still as death, with her eyes blown wide and her breathing labored. Her heart was pounding in her chest and all she could hear was the blood pumping through her ears. The world around them may as well have gone completely missing. All she knew in that moment were those striking purple eyes, the body glued to hers, and those infuriating, seductive lips.

“Miraculous ladybug!” A swarm of red magical bugs later, the two of them were a meter apart, feet planted firmly on the ground, eyes still absolutely captivated in the other’s. Tearing her gaze from his was like ripping off a limb. Without bothering to catch up with the other heroes, she fled as far as her wings would take her.

She gasped in delight as his hands swept up under her skirt to grasp her legs, pulling her up to settle on his hips as he guided her further into the dark room. She locked her arms around his neck for balance, fingers sifting through that soft red hair of his like she’d wanted beyond belief to do before. He set her down on a shelf somewhere on the back wall of the supply closet and she wrapped her legs around his waist, using them to pull him flush against her. He hungrily attacked her lips, course hands snaking a path up her legs. He smiled.

“Did you wear this for me, Bee?” he asked, playfully tugging on her skirt.

She chuckled as his hands traveled further up. “You wish.”

He smiled anew as he discovered her braless. “And this?”

“Total coincidence,” she said, knowing by now that he could feel the truth.

He kissed a path to her ear, then whispered in that thick, desire-laden voice of his, “Liar.” Then his lips closed around the skin of her neck again and all playful banter was gone, both of them lost in heat. Arousal stirred to life between her legs as her shirt was thrown aside and hands, lips, and tongue explored her bare skin.

Her fate had been sealed by one bloody akuma fight. The Razorblade had been the toughest opponent she had yet to face. She was still covered in scars from the battle, that akuma having given her slices so deep that marks were permanently left on her skin even after Ladybug’s cure. As tended to be the case, Le Paon had been her sparring partner while the others took down the akuma. Sharp razors flitted through the air left and right, adding an irritating layer to their fight—even Paon didn’t come out unscathed. And the battle lasted hours. She went back and forth with him that whole time, every second making her seethe with increasing anger.

As per usual, they went for each other’s miraculous. After all, fighting Paon really wasn’t all that different from fighting an akuma: the battle would only truly be won by capturing the item which gave them their power. Le Paon wore his brooch on his chest with pride and she wondered how it was even possible for him to walk around as a civilian without that gaudy thing sticking out like a sore thumb.

She was somewhere in the middle of one of her usual dances with him, spinning free from a gust of wind he sent rushing her way with his fans, when she realized the battle was turning in her favor. They had been at it for nearly three hours straight, the both of them taking hit after hit from each other and their bodies displaying their intense blood loss from the razors, but still they continued. And he was slipping.

They were the same moves, the same routine, as always, but he was getting sloppy, lethargic. He was tired. She could sense it in his movements. His twirling motions with his fans were just the slightest bit slower. He got knocked slightly harder than usual when he didn’t dodge as effectively. And suddenly, he was hers.

Any onlooker wouldn’t have known what happened, but the both of them couldn’t possibly have missed it. He was just a second too slow, and the brooch was within her reach, wide open and unprotected. She could take it. She could end it. Right then and there.

But she hesitated.

It was a mere fraction of a second before she pressed through, reaching for him anyway, but that mere fraction of a second was all it took for him to escape her grasp yet again, their dance continuing on anew.

And so they danced, pretending nothing had changed.

But they both knew.

They knew that she couldn’t do it.

Le Paon rubbed himself against her, hugging her thighs against his waist. She kept her arms locked around his neck, fingers splayed in his hair, as she moaned into his lips. From where she sat, she had no control over the situation. She was completely at his mercy. Her fists in his hair were her only leverage over him as he ground against her, the thin fabric of her underwear offering little protection from his turgid jeans.

She gasped in a complex mixture of pain and pleasure as his nails bit into the flesh of her legs. No one could ever make her feel as good as he did. At times like these she loved that she hated him. She loved his hate. She loved how it kept them from holding back. She loved how far from gentle they could be with each other. Because when your lover is your enemy, you can be as rough as you want. Bruises, scratches, pain—it was all par for the course. They gave each other far worse out in public. It heightened every touch, set every nerve on edge. They were toeing the line between lust and danger. The stakes were high. Any moment with Le Paon could be her downfall and his with her.

Dangerous.

A couple days after Razorblade, Queen Bee had been half way through her patrol when a flash of red and purple had skirted her peripheral vision, disappearing behind an alleyway nearby. Readying her top for attack, she flew down, only to find an empty alley. She heard movement behind her and spun, catching them in her grasp and slamming them back against the wall.

The daring purple eyes of Le Paon stared down at her, a smirk painted upon his lips even though she had a hand around his throat. He laughed light heartedly and raised his hands in surrender. “You caught me!”

She narrowed her eyes at him and almost loosened her grasp, momentarily forgetting that they weren’t friends. Instead, she tightened it. “No, I didn’t. You let me catch you. Why?”

He let his hands fall and casually placed them on his hips. She hated how at ease he was at her mercy, as if calling her bluff. As if he knew that she wouldn’t do anything to him.

Because he did.

“So that you could take my miraculous,” he said nonchalantly. He indicated to the brooch waiting completely open on his chest. “Go ahead. It’s all yours. If,” he added, narrowing his eyes at her, “you _want_ to take it.”

She stared at him, fury burning in her eyes. She glanced at his miraculous—the peacock shone bright with its array of colors, even in the dull evening light—then back at him. He smiled.

“That’s what I thought.”

“Why are you doing this?”

Even though her fingers still curled around his neck, he reached out and wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her to him. She was helpless to resist. “Because I want you, Bee,” he said, and just like that day with the circus freak, his expression and his voice were free of mischief. This was no game. He leaned his head toward her and her grip on his neck loosened. His eyes flicked to her lips then back up. “And I know you want me too.”

It was true. Dear god it was true. The brooch was right there within her reach and suffice to say he was more vulnerable than she had ever seen him before. But she wouldn’t take it. She couldn’t.

She couldn’t bring herself to reach for it. To pull it from him. Because then it would be over. The dance, the chase, the game. It would all be over.

He leaned in closer, moving ever so slowly. He was waiting, giving her a chance to escape. Because he could feel what she was feeling. He could feel her hesitation, her panic, her absolute frustration at the predicament she’d found herself in.

But he could also feel her desire. He could feel that magnetic force that seemed to be pulling them together. He could feel how rapidly the ice beneath her was thinning—how close she was to plunging in.

She was hanging by a thread. She was just about to snap.

She watched as his eyes slid shut.

She should leave. She should push him away. It wasn’t too late. She didn’t have to take his miraculous. She could just push him away and run.

But she didn’t.

She didn’t want to.

She stayed right there and closed her eyes, letting him kiss her. Letting him take her heart.

His hand moved from her leg up to her waist, skimmed the edge of her breast, caressed her neck, and tangled up into her hair. She had worn it half down that day so that he would have something to tug on, as she’d realized he liked after one of their previous trysts. Indeed, he curled strands of her hair around his fingers and pulled it tight, the sensation dragging a groan out from her chest.

He could reach up just the slightest bit further at any moment and take her comb if he wanted to. But she knew that he wouldn’t. Because he was trapped just like her. Likewise, as she let her fingers skim down his torso and find the waistline of his pants, she could reach into his pocket and take the brooch. She had realized that that was where he kept it during the day a while back, and he knew that she knew. But if anything, he came even closer as her hands reached such dangerous territory.

She had just unbuckled his belt when a tone chirped from her abandoned purse across the room. She sighed, prolonging their kiss as long as she could. “That’s my alarm,” she said, catching his lips in between words. “I have to go.” Rather than letting her go, he deepened their kiss, pressing his tongue against hers, and she melted into him.

“Don’t go,” he breathed. With one hand behind her head and the other on her waist, he held her impossibly close. “I know you don’t want to.”

She smiled against his lips as he kissed her again. “You don’t have the miraculous abilities right now,” she said, sighing as his lips and tongue traced kisses up and down the length of her neck.

“Doesn’t mean I don’t know you,” he replied, hot breath caressing her skin. She shivered—from the sensation or the words, she wasn’t sure. As he caught her lips in his again, she reluctantly refastened his belt. He only pulled her closer.

She smoothed her hands up his waist—loving the soft contours of his muscles—and slipped her arms back up around his neck, letting herself sink into one last kiss before finally pulling away. He grudgingly parted from her lips and released her hair, allowing her to slip down from the shelf he had seated her on. She felt around on the ground until she found her shirt and pulled it back on, then crossed the room to find her purse. She fished out her phone and carefully turned off the alarm, making sure the screen didn’t illuminate her face or any other defining features. Then she rose, slipping the strap of her purse over her shoulder. Behind her, she could hear the rustling of fabric as he pulled his own shirt back on.

“Pollen, transform me.” In a shower of gold and black, Chloé was gone and Queen Bee stood in her place. “Ready?” she asked, unwilling to open the door until he was transformed too for fear of seeing him.

Paon didn’t say anything. She heard his footsteps approaching, and then his bare hands were on her cheeks, pulling her into the most gentle of kisses. Unlike all the others, there was no fire in this kiss. No excitement. No burning need.

There was only love.

She couldn’t breathe. She felt like she would break down right then and there. He was kissing her so kindly, so delicately, and she couldn’t handle it. Every moment they’d shared before had been heated, rash, chaotic. That was what made it bearable. That was all that had allowed her to keep up the lie to herself that this wasn’t as serious as it was. That she would be able to come out of this unscathed.

She breathed slow and deep, pushing back the tears that threatened her eyes. Just one kiss. It was just one kiss, but just like that first one, it had completely destroyed her.

“What gives you the right,” she whispered, “to kiss me like that?”

He said nothing, only responding by pressing his lips against her forehead in another heartbreakingly sweet gesture, then whispered, “Duusu, transform me.” And just like that, the gloved hands of Le Paon were back on her skin. She hated him. She hated him for doing this to her. She hated that he _could_ do this to her.

A moment later, she was gone, flying over the rooftops of Paris as unhindered tears spilled from her eyes.

She couldn’t deny it anymore. She loved him.

And she hated that she loved him.


	2. Eyes Closed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [We kiss just to make up, we love just to break up. We head for disaster, but live for the danger.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1n045fmCA6Q)
> 
> [I wanna drink 'til I don't feel the urge to run back to you and lay down.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxG5C4q_rEs)
> 
> [If I keep my eyes closed, he looks just like you.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LhN6E01Mkc)
> 
> [I've been told to get you off my mind, but I hope I never lose the bruises that you left behind.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84znrPmOePc)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Copious amounts of drinking in this chapter and a lot of explicit language.

Chloé’s momentum stopped when she heard the song. She had been able to hear the music from two blocks down—really it was a miracle he didn’t have any hearing loss by now—but she froze right there on the sidewalk the moment the track changed.

_Time to listen to my confession. I’m much less than I wanted to be._

She hated that damn song. It reminded her of the first time she had tried to do this.

In the months that Queen Bee and Le Paon had been seeing each other, they had grown to be something much more dangerous than she’d ever thought they would be. Their kisses were charged like always, but they were more than just raw sexual desire now. They were more than just passionate.

They were cohesive.

Every kiss, every touch, every move was completely complementary. Like a perfectly rehearsed dance, they moved in tandem with one another, and never fell out of step.

They had grown familiar.

His hand cupped the back of her head just how she liked as their lips glided against each other in a perfect rhythm. Her arms coiled around his neck and she pulled herself up until she was standing on her toes and completely flush against him. He held her tight around the waist and their bodies melded together like perfect puzzle pieces sliding into place. His tongue melted and curled with hers in a precise give and take, a rhythm that was every bit as perfected as it was seductive. She was breathless from his kiss, burning from his touch. Her fingers unfastened his belt and unbuttoned his pants with practiced ease before diving down under the silky fabric of his boxers. She felt more than heard his sharp intake of breath as skin brushed against skin, tantalizing him just how she knew would drive him mad. He dislodged his lips from hers, leaning his head on her shoulder while she drew shaky breaths out of him. She smiled and brushed her lips delicately along his neck, delighting in the way he twitched against her fingers, his grip on her waist tightening the slightest bit. She loved making him tremble. She loved that she could make him tremble.

She all but jumped out of her skin as the strong beat of a song suddenly interrupted their symphony of sighs and moans.

_Time to listen to my confession. I’m much less than I wanted to be, wanted to be…_

“ _Fuck_ , Paon,” she sighed, recognizing the god damn song he had set as his ringtone. This wasn’t the first time someone had called him in the middle of one of their rendezvous.

“Shit, I forgot they were going to call,” he said, releasing his hold on her body so he could reach into his back pocket. She muttered something about making him sorry as she slipped her hand free and turned around. They had a system worked out. If either of them was handling their phone, the other looked away so that they couldn’t see when the screen illuminated their face. “Hey,” he said as he answered the call. She crossed her arms impatiently and tapped her foot hard enough that he would hear it. Then she remembered why she was there in the first place.

She hadn’t meant to kiss him that day. Much the opposite, in fact. But before she could stop it from happening, he had pulled her into his achingly familiar embrace. And when his lips had locked with hers…she was lost. All she could think of was _him_ and how well they worked together and how much she had to have him.

She hated this. She hated what his presence did to her. She hated how hard it was for her to resist him even if the second she got home she wished she had nothing to do with him. She had to tell him. As soon as he hung up his call, she would tell him how much she _hated_ him for doing this to her, how much she hated herself. She could even tell him that she knew he was a good person underneath and that she was falling _so hard_ for that person, but that it didn’t matter who was underneath because as long as what was on the surface was a _villain_ she had a harder and harder time living with herself. And she… She could tell him that even if it tore her apart, as long as he still worked for Papillon, they couldn’t—

She gasped as his left arm coiled around her waist, pulling her back into him. “Yeah,” he said into the phone, his tone perfectly level as his hand unclasped her jeans and slipped down underneath the waist band. _Fuck_ , she thought, her resolve instantly slipping away. She shouldn’t let him touch her like this. She shouldn’t like it so much. She shouldn’t sink back against him, or melt into him. She shouldn’t love how perfectly suited for her body he seemed to be, or let herself feel so comfortable and _warm_ with him.

But she did. She did all of that. She loved his touch and the constant warmth that radiated from his chest, and she loved how familiar he was becoming. She loved how rough he was with her and she loved the way he bit her when she moaned and the way he whispered in her ear to be quiet. She loved it all. She loved him.

“Chloé!” The twinkling voice of her kwami snapped her back to the moment at hand. That stupid song was still playing, but she had stopped walking mere meters from the studio. Pollen floated in front of her, a tiny paw resting on her forehead and concern in those reflective blue eyes. “Are you okay?”

Tears prickled at the corners of her eyes. She blinked, trying to force them away, but the more she looked at the tiny god’s worried expression, the harder it became to contain. “I don’t want to do this,” she admitted, voice weak.

“I know…” The bee came forward to press her forehead against her own and Chloé could feel the warmth of her magic healing her just the slightest bit. Pollen didn’t say anything more. She didn’t say _you have to, even if it’s hard_ , or _things can’t go on this way_. She never did. Not even when things were at their worst. Not even when Chloé was a mess, drinking herself into oblivion and making herself little more than a puddle of tears and snot leaning against the couch on the floor of her living room. Pollen had comforted her then, just like she comforted her now, and expressed worry over what this was doing to her, but never once over the morality of it all. She supposed that it was beneath an immortal god to comment on the silly human affairs of the heart.

In some ways, it was a relief. She never had to worry about receiving judgment or shame from the kwami about her sex life, even when said sex life centered around their enemy.

In other ways though, it made it all even harder. Sometimes she wished Pollen would shame her for her relationship with Le Paon, if nothing else just to have someone other than herself tell her that it was _a bad idea_. She wished Pollen would tell her she had to break up with him, even when she didn’t want to hear it. Because when it was just her telling herself that she had to do it, her resolve weakened every second she was near him.

Like the last time she’d been with him, two weeks ago. Mere minutes after an akuma battle, she had been pulled into a dark supply closet and shoved up against the wall. Desire had ignited within her instantly as his lips crashed down on hers in an angry, needy kiss. She had wanted nothing more than to reciprocate, to take him as her own just as he wanted to take her, but she _couldn’t_. It had taken every ounce of strength she owned to push those desires down and force her lips away from his.

“Paon—!” she cried breathlessly, gasping as his lips locked on her neck. While he was never one for being gentle, he really wasn’t holding back then, devouring her skin with lips, tongue, and teeth. She had no doubt that she would have one of the darkest hickies in existence the next day.

She reluctantly took a fistful of his hair and forced his head away from her, breathing heavy as his mouth dislodged from her neck. He kept his grip on her waist tight as he gasped for air, resting his forehead against hers.

“Paon, I—,”

“Don’t say it,” he urged, pulling her even closer.

He had known what was coming the second he’d pulled her in there. Because just ten minutes prior in battle, she hadn’t held back. For the first time in months, their dance had followed no routine, no careful choreography. It had been a 100% genuine fight. And when she’d received an opening, she had gone for it.

His hand had snatched hers right as she was about to reach her target, catching her in his grasp. Their eyes met then, and he knew. He could feel it.

He could feel her decision to be nothing but his enemy once more.

“I see,” he had said then, letting her pull herself free. Then, without another word, they had continued their battle.

“Please,” he whispered, voice so much weaker this time. Her resolve nearly disappeared just hearing him plead with her. “Just…one last time.” Then he leaned down toward her once again, slowly. Her hand was still in his hair. She could stop him. She could pull him away for good and leave, never allowing herself another taste of him.

But she didn’t do that. Instead, she let go.

“One last time.”

With a deep breath, Chloé pushed forward, her kwami settling back into her purse as she continued down the sidewalk. She finally pushed open the door to the studio—the tiny bell attached inaudible over the loud music—and stopped when she spotted him. The artist.

Nathaniel Kurtzberg.

It had been five years since she’d last seen the red headed artist when she’d bumped into him at Marinette and Adrien’s engagement party last Saturday. Just earlier that day she had been forced to battle Le Paon for the first time since the breakup—could she really call it that if what they had wasn’t an official thing to begin with?—so she wasn’t exactly in a party mood. Not to mention, most of the people at that party had good reason to hate her. Only Marinette, Adrien, Alya, and Nino knew of her good side. So while everyone else laughed, danced, and had a good time, Chloé hung out with a bottle of wine—which, to her dismay, she finished.

She frowned at the empty bottle. Maybe this was a good place to stop. Then she looked up as a bunch of people cheered to see the stars of the show enwrapped in a sickeningly sweet kiss.

Nope. She still wasn’t drunk enough.

Grumbling something cynical about happy couples under her breath, she made her way to the kitchen. She had just uncorked a new bottle when the red head had walked in, looking just about as bitter as she felt. He glanced at her, then at the bottle in her hand—the last bottle—then back at her.

“Mind sharing?”

“And if I do?”

He put one hand on his hip and pushed the other back through his hair, eyes moving to the corner of the room. She didn’t like how perfect his stupidly bright red hair looked despite being way too long and wild, and she especially didn’t like that he seemed to have developed a slight muscle mass under that loose fitting V-neck t-shirt. Screw him for having gotten sexy since collège.

“Well then honestly I wouldn’t be that surprised.”

_Wow, fuck you too._

She stared daggers at him—and was surprised when he leveled her gaze—as she took a swig of wine straight from the bottle. Then she held it out toward him. _Let’s see if he still wants it now that it means sharing germs with his childhood bully._

She raised her brows just the slightest bit as he took it. “Thanks,” he said with a cheap smile. _Prick_. She rolled her eyes as he took a drink. “So what’s got you hiding from the happy couple?”

Rather than answer his question, she decided to revert back to her teenage bitchiness. “Ooh, is that a bit of resentment I hear?” she replied, laying the bitterness down thick in her most antagonizing voice. “What’s wrong, Red? Still hung up on Marinette?”

She expected him to leave. Maybe spit a few nasty words first, but ultimately leave. That was what she wanted. She didn’t make a habit of treating people this way anymore—only when she felt it necessary. And at that moment, pissing off an old classmate—who, let’s be honest here, already hated her—to get him to leave her alone so she could drink her misery in peace was pretty necessary.

Needless to say she was surprised when the artist’s reaction was to laugh. A somewhat genuine laugh too, not even a sarcastic _I hate you_ kind of laugh. “Wow, you sure are bitter. What’s got your panties in a twist?”

Her eyebrows disappeared up into her hairline. “ _Wow_ , you’ve sure grown some balls since the last time I saw you.”

He laughed some more. What the hell? She was trying— _actively trying_ —to be rude to him and he was _amused_. “That I have,” he replied. “So what’s the deal, you still not over Adrien? Or maybe you’re still not over _Marinette_.”

She rolled her eyes and snatched the wine bottle from his hand. “For your information, the two love birds out there are my best friends and I’m very happy for them, whether their relationship single handedly destroyed the two biggest crushes of my life or not.” She drank to that. She honestly wasn’t bitter about that anymore; she’d made her amends years ago and was especially happy for them once she’d found out about their alter egos. But she would be lying if she said there wasn’t a time when their relationship had broken her heart.

Well, broken her heart by 17-year-old-Chloé standards—in other words, nothing compared to what she was going through now.

“I’m surprised.” She looked at him with one eyebrow raised in silent question as she gulped down more wine. “That you didn’t deny your crush on Marinette.” She rolled her eyes again.

“Please, the whole school knew just as well as they knew you had red hair. How do you get it to be such an obnoxious color anyway?” she asked, looking for a way to change the subject and hopefully insult him enough to get him to go away.

No such luck. The redhead smiled again and came closer to her to reach for the bottle. She allowed him to take it. “I’ll have you know,” he said, leaning his head a bit too close for comfort, “my hair is naturally obnoxious.”

“Just like you,” she remarked, refusing to back up as he tested her personal space. He smirked, casting a quick glance down before returning his gaze to her eyes. She really didn’t like what _that_ look was doing to her.

“Exactly,” he responded, and the motherfucker had the audacity to _wink_ as he raised the bottle of wine to his lips. She blinked in mild shock as he turned and put a couple steps of space between them again. What was with him!? As he tipped his head back to take a swig of wine, she admired the shifting of his shoulders under the thin fabric of his t-shirt. Man, puberty may have hit him late, but it hit him _well_. She shamelessly let her eyes dip lower. Nice butt too.

“You’re great at changing the subject, by the way,” he said, spinning back around. Her eyes darted back up and she hoped he hadn’t noticed the trip they had taken. He was smirking though, and that wasn’t a good sign. Especially with how sexy it was. “You really don’t want to talk about whatever’s got you drinking in here, do you?” He offered the bottle her way and she glared at him as she took it.

“And you really don’t want to talk about your feelings for Marinette, do you?” she retorted.

He stared at her, a strange glint in those stupidly pretty teal eyes and a grin at the corner of his lips. Some strange familiarity itched at the back of her mind watching him smirk like that but she only washed it down with more wine.

Eventually, he rolled his eyes. “I stopped being hung up on Marinette the day you akumatized me, Chloé. I’m bitter now because I just went through…a break up. I guess.” She raised a sassy eyebrow at him and handed over the bottle.

“You guess?” she pried as he took a long drink. “What, they weren’t clear enough for you?”

“Oh no, she was pretty clear. I just don’t know if what we had in the first place constitutes calling it a break up.”

She huffed. “I’ll drink to that.”

One red eyebrow rose as he passed the bottle back. She really didn’t like how light it was feeling. “You too?”

She shrugged. “Something like that, I guess.” Or exactly like that. Though she imagined his situation had been far less complicated than hers.

She raised the bottle and frowned when she only received a small swig of wine. “Well, looks like this little misery party is over.” Though she definitely still wasn’t drunk enough. Two weeks had passed and she still couldn’t erase the feeling of his touch from her skin. Every inch of her ached with the memory of his hands, his lips, his teeth—his _everything_. It kept her up at night, tossing and turning in unbearable heat and wanting nothing more than to track him down and make him _hers_ again.

She needed to drink more if she had any plans of sleeping that night.

“You know,” her eyes snapped back up to the artist as he spoke again, “I have an old bottle of merlot that I’ve been waiting for just the right shitty occasion to drink, and I hate drinking alone. Care to join me?” She scowled at him.

“Shouldn’t you save that for a special occasion?”

“No, I hate merlot. That’s why I only want to associate it with feeling like shit.”

“Oh, so _that’s_ why you’re inviting me.”

He grinned and leaned in close again. There he went again, casting a glance downwards before snapping back up to her eyes, only it was much more obvious this time. Under a gaze like that, she felt like prey. If she didn’t know any better she would think the guy was flirting with her. “Obviously,” he said, voice suddenly dropping to a much lower tone—one that resonated deep within her, sparking something dangerous. “What other reason could I possibly have for inviting a pretty girl to my place?”

Okay scratch that, he was _definitely_ flirting with her. Somewhere in the back of her mind she wondered how much alcohol he had consumed before finding her, because half a bottle of wine definitely wasn’t enough to make _Nathaniel_ _Kurtzberg_ come onto her.

She studied him warily. There it was again, that achingly familiar glint in his eyes as he smirked at her. Almost like he was _challenging_ her. Almost as if he knew how attracted to him she was, and how much she’d be lying if she said it wasn’t one hell of a tempting offer.

Then she wondered why she was even telling herself no. This was Nathaniel, not Paon. While she was almost assured to be doing something stupid if she went home with him, it wasn’t like it would be _wrong_.

Maybe alcohol wasn’t the only way to erase Paon from her skin.

He cocked an eyebrow, waiting for an answer. She should have said no.

But she didn’t.

The song switched tracks again, finally moving on from that damn ringtone, and Chloé frowned as she watched the artist at the other side of the studio. He had his back to her and hadn’t noticed her entry yet, giving her plenty of time to observe him in his natural habitat. His pretty red hair was pulled back into a short pony tail so that it didn’t hang in his face as he worked with the clay in front of him.

She inwardly recoiled at the sight of the brown mush spinning on a wheel as it brought back flashbacks of the pottery class she had once been dumb enough to take. No one had told her how incompatible the clay would be with her manicures, nor how badly it would dry out her skin, giving her…

…calluses.

She sighed, watching his clay-covered hands work the mushy form into something beautiful.

She felt really stupid.

Nathaniel’s hands had felt like Paon’s on her skin. The way he gripped her waist as he kissed her and the way he smoothed his hand up her back before grabbing fistfuls of her hair, she could feel that he had calluses just like Paon. Not only that, the way his tongue intertwined with hers and his lips glided against hers in a smooth, seductive, _perfect_ rhythm made her ache with how much it felt like him. Every kiss, every touch, every move felt like Paon. With her eyes closed and her mind swimming in wine, she could almost think it _was_ him.

Almost.

She had woken Sunday morning with one hell of a headache and an even stronger guilt as she felt the arms of the artist wrapped around her waist. Without any alcohol left in her system to blur her sense of morality, she could no longer feel justified in what she had done.

She had used him. She couldn’t paint it any other way. She had 100% used him, first as an attempt to get over Paon, but then even worse, as a thinly veiled substitute for him when she realized how similar they felt.

She sighed, hating how much she _didn’t_ want to move. Even without any alcohol in her system, she couldn’t deny how familiar he felt with his chest against her back. She and the artist fit together with frightening perfection—to the extent that sleeping in his arms through the whole night had been _easy_. In all her relationships before, she had found it necessary to kick partners out of her bed because she just _could not_ sleep while cuddling, no matter how much she liked the person or their cuddles. And yet, here she was, feeling flawless and like she could honestly sleep some more with the redhead spooning her.

Chloé mentally shook herself and told herself it was the alcohol that made her sleepy. Then she gently moved his arms so she could slip out of the bed. She took a glance back at the artist to check if he was still asleep. He was indeed, and wow…the wine definitely hadn’t lied about how attractive he was. Especially with such a peaceful, almost innocent sleeping face.

Her gut clenched with guilt at such a beautiful sight. If only she had met him before meeting Paon. Maybe this could have been different. But with things the way they were, she needed to get out of there.

As she collected her various articles of clothing from around the room, she wondered if she ought to wake him up before leaving. She had already wronged him by using him; the least she could do was not be the asshole who slips out without a word in the morning. But she also didn’t know if facing him would be much better. What would she even say? Thanks for last night but I’m leaving now and please never speak to me again? Yeah, that was loads better than just disappearing. Maybe she should just leave him a note, or—

As she picked up her shirt from the ground, the glint of light bouncing off metal caught her eye. On the floor in front of her were Nathaniel’s pants, with something black and shiny peeking out of the pocket. Before she even knew what she was doing, she was reaching for it. The object was a pendant or a brooch of some sort, and seemed to be metal, but was completely black and glossy. It had a strange shape, consisting of a sort of fan attached to a small body-like structure. She recognized it as some sort of animal. One she’d seen countless times before. The one with the…colors. What was it? It was that really pretty one. She whined and gripped her head in her hand, suddenly feeling very dizzy. She needed food. And coffee.

She stared back down at the figure resting in her palm. The name was just on the tip of her tongue, she _swore_. But just as she might have been about to recognize the object as the bird that it was, a rustling and groaning in the bed stole her attention away.

The artist was propping himself up on an elbow and rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “Chloé?” She just stood there dumbly, staring at him with her shirt in one hand and his brooch in the other. Her head was swimming, and not in a good way. Her brain felt foggy, as if there was some sort of disconnect trying in vain to come together. Something about the brooch, and the pants pocket, and the familiarity, and…

…And she was still shirtless. The redhead blinked at her. She blinked back.

“So it wasn’t a dream, then. Last night, you and I…”

She nodded and hastily threw her shirt over her head, setting down the object on a nearby desk. “Yeah,” she said, not really knowing what else to say. He nodded, looking like he was feeling just about as awkward as she was. “Look,” she eventually said, “I need to apologize to you.” He raised his eyebrows at her, seemingly surprised, but waited patiently. “Last night… I used you. I used you for sex in a vain attempt to get over my…ex.” She hesitated to use the word, but she supposed she’d better start getting used to calling him that. “I’m sorry.”

“Oh thank goodness,” he sighed, plopping back down on the pillow.

…Wait, what? “Thank goodness? You’re _glad_ I used you?”

“Yeah, I used you too. Like, being completely honest, at some point I think I started imagining you were her.”

She blinked, feeling oddly relieved. And mildly offended. But mostly relieved. She half-heartedly laughed. “Well I guess that makes this conversation a lot easier.”

“Yeah seriously,” he said, sounding way too casual for the situation in her opinion. “You want some breakfast? I think waffles are the best hangover food.”

“Oh, no thanks, I—N-Nathaniel!!” she yelped, interrupting herself as he rolled out of bed and made his way to the kitchen. He paused and blankly stared at her.

“What?”

She blinked at him—at his _naked body_ —and then picked his pants up off the ground and held them out toward him, covering her eyes with the other hand. “Please cover yourself!”

“Didn’t you see me naked last night?”

“Yeah, but—,”

“I’m not ugly am I?”

“What? No, I—!”

“Then why does it matter? I mean last night you could very clearly see me when you were—,”

“ _Would you shut up and put on the damn pants_!?” She could hear him laughing as he walked toward her. “Why are you laughing!?”

“I guess I never expected you to be one for modesty.” He took the pants from her hand and she waited. “So waffles, yes or no? You can uncover your eyes, by the way.”

She sighed as she brought her hand down. “Thank you for the offer, but I—WHAT THE FUCK NATHANIEL!” She smacked her hand over her eyes again as the motherfucker laughed even harder.

“Sorry, sorry, I’ll put them on for real now.”

“I will hurt you.” He laughed some more.

“I don’t doubt that. Okay, I’m covered.”

“How do I know you’re not lying?”

She felt him come closer then, way too close, and his voice dropped to that stupidly seductive level as he gently took the hand hanging at her side. “Well if you want, you can _feel_ them on me.” She immediately uncovered her eyes and snatched her hand away, glaring at him. Those smoldering teal eyes were way too close for comfort, and that wicked grin far too attractive.

“Are you seriously flirting with me right now? After we mutually used each other last night?” He immediately dropped the smolder and smiled, stepping to the side to grab the brooch off the desk and slip it into his pocket.

“Sorry, I just really like seeing you blush like that.”

She grumbled something under her breath as he walked over to the kitchen. The apartment was a small one-room placed right above his art studio and while it was certainly small for her taste, she thought it perfectly befitting the artist. “As I was saying, I appreciate the offer, but I think I’ll just get going.”

“Aw, come on. You used me for sex, the least you could do is stay for breakfast.”

“Excuse me, you used me too.”

“Yes, I did,” he said as he started a pot of coffee. “So let me make it up to you by making you breakfast. I’ll have you know that my waffles are to die for.” He grinned at her and she narrowed her eyes at him.

“Why do you want me to stay so much?” He rolled his eyes and smiled as he got out various cooking utensils, including one of those special rotating waffle irons.

“Would you believe me if I said I enjoy your company?”

She watched him warily for a moment. “…No.”

“Oh. Well that sucks, because believe it or not, it’s true.”

“How can you enjoy my company?” she asked, feet naturally carrying her toward him. “Don’t you hate me or something?”

He snorted. “I did, like, five years ago. But now? Nah. You’re pretty fun, actually. I like our banter.”

She paused. “Our…banter? You mean me firing insults at you and you stoking the flames?”

He grinned up at her as he scooped flour into a mixing bowl. “Yeah, that.”

She stared at him in disbelief. “Are you a masochist or something?”

“I mean, you had sex with me last night, you tell me.” She supposed he could be, but if anything he was really more of a dom, based on the way he liked to take control, and hold her legs with a tight grip while he—

She felt her face burn up as he mischievously glanced at her, knowing exactly what sorts of thoughts were going through her head. _Motherfucker…_ Thankfully, he changed the subject. “Oh, look at that, I added way too much flour for just one person. Well, looks like you’ll have to stay now, otherwise all these delicious waffles will just go to waste.” She glared at him. He grinned back. Finally, she rolled her eyes and took a seat in one of the barstools across the counter from him.

“Fine, but these waffles better be as delicious as you say they are.”

“Oh they will be, trust me,” he said, grinning up at her as he threw ingredients together. He didn’t seem to be properly measuring anything, or even following a recipe. She watched in mild horror as he just took out a carton of milk and callously poured.

“Shouldn’t you be using a measuring cup for that or something?”

“Calm down, I know what I’m doing.”

“But—,”

“Shh.” She pursed her lips and he smirked at her. She rolled her eyes, trying not to think about how much she liked that expression on his features.

“Well, you’re going to have to come up with something to distract me, because otherwise I will just sit here and back seat cook the entire time.”

“So last night was fun,” he immediately offered.

Okay, that definitely derailed her thoughts about his cooking.

“I’m sorry, what? You thought that getting wine drunk over our mutual misery and having sex was _fun_?”

“Well the sex part at least.” He peered up at her from under a veil of pretty red hair as he mixed the batter. “We have great physical chemistry.”

She supposed she couldn’t deny that. “Yeah. We do.”

He looked away again, checking on the heat of the waffle iron. “It’d be a shame to let it go to waste.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Where are you going with this?”

He glanced up at her and smirked when he saw her expression. She waited patiently as he got out a coffee cup and set it down in front of her. “I have a proposition.” He walked away to retrieve the coffee pot and she raised an inquisitive eyebrow at him.

“A proposition?”

“A proposition.” He smiled at her way too peacefully as he poured coffee into the mug.

“Look, Red, I’m really not into the idea of being in a relationship right now.”

He smiled, seeming to like the nickname she had given him in annoyance the night before. “Not a relationship, a friendship.”

She stared at him with both brows raised. “You want to be friends,” she said flatly.

“With benefits.”

“Benefits.”

“Well, specifically sex.”

“You want to be friends with sex.”

“Friends who have sex.”

“Who have sex in general…?”

“With each other.”

She held his gaze as she inhaled a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You want to be friends who have sex with each other.”

“Yep.” He took a sip of coffee from the mug between them, staring at her with stupidly cute flirty eyes the whole time, and then set it down and pushed it toward her. “Do you like your coffee black? Need some sweetener? I have some vanilla cream if you—,”

“Whoa, whoa, hold up,” she interrupted, pinching the bridge of her nose between a finger and thumb. She couldn’t believe he was just casually offering her coffee sweeteners after dropping a bomb like that. “Why do you want to be friends with benefits?”

He shrugged. “Like I said, we have great chemistry. And I like you Chloé. You’re fun to talk with, and you seem just level headed enough that a friends with benefits situation wouldn’t actually get too messy. And I mean, you just went through a breakup, I just went through a breakup—,”

“What makes you think I _just_ went through a breakup?” He paused and stared at her in surprise.

“Are you not aware that your body is covered in hickies?”

Her face flushed deep red at the memory of Paon’s… _parting gift_. He had so relentlessly attacked her skin—on her neck, back, stomach, thighs, etc.—that even two weeks later, she was still waiting for the marks to fade. It was almost like he had been _trying_ to make it impossible for her to get rid of the feeling of him. Hell, he probably was; that’s what she had been doing that night too, after all. And damn had it worked… To say that she hadn’t enjoyed every bit of it would be a bold faced lie.

The more obvious hickies she had been covering with makeup, but it didn’t occur to her that the ones in more intimate areas would have been perfectly visible to Nathaniel the night before.

The artist observed her for a moment as she blushed, seeming to take sadistic joy in the sight. “Anyway,” he continued, “I just think that the situation at hand is presenting us with one hell of a tempting offer and it would be a shame to let it pass by.”

She stared at him over the brim of the mug as she took a sip of coffee. She should just say no. She couldn’t even blame it on the alcohol this time. She knew full well that entering into a friends with benefits relationship was risky as all hell, no matter who it was with, and doing something like that with someone she had bullied when she was younger was probably one of the dumbest things she could possibly get herself into.

And yet, there it was again. That achingly familiar glint in his eyes, that subtle challenge accompanying that sexy smirk. It certainly didn’t help that his long red hair was still messy and he still hadn’t put on a shirt, leaving his far too attractive torso—complete with the occasional hicky of his own—bare and perfectly on display to tempt her.

He had done that on purpose.

Even worse, it was working.

He smiled and went back to making waffles, pouring some batter onto the iron. She should say no. She should just say no. She should say no and leave. Or stay for waffles, but still say no. She could even agree to the friends part, maybe, but not the sex.

She should have just said no.

But she didn’t.

Chloé sighed as she continued to lean against the doorway, just observing the artist at work with his clay. She thought it unfair how he could be so sexy while basically wearing rags. Tattered, paint splattered jeans and a loose, equally stained tank top should not look _that good_ , no matter how beautifully muscled his arms were. Seeing him so zoned in and focused on his work made it even worse. She had never been granted the sight of the artist in his element before. She’d never gotten to see that thin layer of sweat on his skin, or that intense focus in his eyes, complete with the very slight pucker in his lips and the tiny crease in his brow.

She smiled despite herself. He was really cute.

She groaned, thumping her head against the wall behind her in frustration. It simply _wasn’t fair_. She liked him. She liked him a lot. If she was being completely honest, she quite simply had no desire to break up with him. Why should she have to stop seeing someone who she liked? Someone whose company she enjoyed and who she had absolutely _breathtaking_ chemistry with. Someone whose presence made her forget the rest of the world and made her _want_ to forget the rest of the world. Someone who she could even fall asleep with.

She shouldn’t have to step away from something she wanted so badly. It wasn’t fair.

Chloé sighed, observing the way the artist smeared clay along his cheek as he pushed a strand of hair behind his ear, blissfully unaware of her presence.

If only she hadn’t figured it out. Then she could just keep going with this. Be friends with him. Have sex with him. Probably get to know him better. Maybe even allow herself to fall in love with him. Without the guilt this time. She could just…be with him. Blissfully unaware.

With his hair swept back like that, Chloé had a clear view of the nearly faded hickies on his neck. The hickies that—along with the others that dotted his chest—had appeared in her dream the night before. Her dream in which Paon had pulled her into that dark room and kissed her fiercely. In which she had pulled his hair and he had begged her not to say the words on her tongue. In which they had agreed, _one last time_ , and then transformations were dropped and lips were locked.

They had gone to war on each other’s skin—scratching, kissing, biting. From the very beginning, leaving marks had been the most dangerous and the most exciting thing they had done to each other. She recalled the first time she had gone home with one of his kiss marks on her neck—the way her heart raced at the sight of it, the way she panicked over the prospect of it being seen, but most of all the swell of heat that she felt knowing he had claimed her as his and that he would likely do it again. She had returned the favor in kind the next time she had seen him, and was delighted to find that he enjoyed it just as much as she did.

Their last time together, therefore, seemed to be complete with a silent mutual agreement to leave the deepest, most lasting marks they could. She didn’t know how many hickies he’d left on her body that night—too many to keep track of—but she’d counted exactly seven that she’d given him: two on the left side of his neck, one on the right, one on his right shoulder, one on his collarbone, one on his lower abdomen, and lastly, one on his chest, right above his heart.

She had pulled her lips away from his skin and opened her eyes, admiring her work in the early morning light that fell in through the windows. The redhead stared back at her, a counter now between them, waiting for her response, with his seven hickies slightly faded, but exactly where she’d left them. Her eyes trailed up from the bottom, connecting the dots. She recalled holding him down as he writhed beneath her, cursing and moaning from the mark she left on his lower abdomen. She recalled him breathing in her ear, fingers digging into her flesh as she left the mark on his chest. She recalled straddling him and feeling him tense against her as she nibbled and sucked on his collarbone. She recalled him relentlessly thrusting into her as she bit down on his right shoulder so as not to scream. She recalled pulling back his hair and tightening it in her fist so she could leave her mark on the right side of his neck. She recalled him sucking on her own skin as she left her second mark on the other side. And she recalled him groaning and pulling her tight as she first locked her lips on the skin right below his ear.

Then her gaze flitted further upwards, where his eyes awaited her. Those eyes that sparkled with mischief. Those eyes that she could never say no to. Those eyes that burned not purple, but bright, dazzling teal.

Nathaniel’s eyes.

Chloé had jolted awake then, springing up in her bed with her hand gripping her chest as she gasped for air. Her heart pounded as adrenaline and arousal still coursed through her body. Through the blood pumping in her ears, she could vaguely hear the sound of her concerned kwami.

“It’s him,” she had said, voice sounding distant. “It’s Paon. It’s Nathaniel. Oh god,” she doubled over with her face in her hands, tears spilling from her eyes, “it’s _him_.”

She hadn’t slept since then, spending the rest of the night crying her eyes out, and then getting up and going to work for the day. She had cruised through the hotel on autopilot all day, her face portraying a perfectly functioning hotel manager while her brain was a torrent of chaotic emotions and moral conundrums. She felt like an idiot. He felt like him. He had calluses like him. He kept a peacock-shaped brooch in his pocket _like him._ Connections passed through her mind’s eye throughout the day and she could slowly feel the unmistakable fog of the miraculous lifting. The clarity with which her thoughts finally came together, pushing through the swirling confusion caused by the protective magic of the miraculous, was the exact same feeling she’d had after finding out her comrades’ secret identities. Suddenly Marinette’s chronic tardiness made sense. Suddenly she couldn’t believe she hadn’t recognized Adrien’s stupid puns sooner. Suddenly she found herself absolutely mortified that she had just naturally accepted that Alya would _ever_ give up the Ladyblog, especially after the appearance of a brand new hero. All of the puzzle pieces had suddenly clicked into place, making her feel like an idiot for not putting it together sooner even though she knew that it was just the powerful ancient magic that had barred her from doing so.

So it was with the peacock miraculous. Even now as she watched him, she could feel the magic kicking in its final attempts to stir her thoughts away—like distracting her with the fact that Le Paon’s eyes were an electric purple while Nathaniel’s were that sparkling teal. But all she had to do was remember the difference between Adrien’s and Chat Noir’s eyes to eliminate that argument. The magic still squirmed, but it was futile, and soon it would fizzle out completely. It was over. She knew.

Three songs had gone by since she’d arrived in the studio. She needed to do this. It was time. With an irritated huff, Chloé finally marched herself over to the stereo and hit the power button, causing the machine to emit a pained dying noise before silencing completely.

“What the—!?” She watched as the artist sprang up from his chair and grabbed a nearby carving tool, equipped with a tiny blade on the end. Upon spotting her, however, he deflated with a relieved sigh. “Jeez, Chloé, you scared the shit out of me.” He set down his tiny weapon and turned back toward his work, turning off the pottery wheel.

_Alright, Chloé. No beating around the bush. Just come out and say it._

“I didn’t think ceramics was your trade.”

_Damn it._

“It’s not,” he replied, a light hearted smile on his lips as he reached for a nearby hand towel. The knot in her stomach tightened just seeing it. She’d always known deep inside that behind the mask was a kind hearted person, but to have him right in front of her eyes displaying such a soft, gentle, sweet, _pure_ expression…it broke her heart. “This is just something I do to relieve stress. And then I paint and sell them later for some extra cash.”

“You’re stressed?” She bit her tongue. She wasn’t there to show concern for him, no matter how much she really cared about his well-being.

“Just a bit.” The redhead finally fully turned toward her then. There it was. That all too familiar sexy smirk that made his identity absolutely unmistakable. “Are you here to help me relieve stress in a different way?” Chloé swallowed down a lump in her throat and clenched her hands into fists, trying to hide their trembling. She watched in dismay as his expression fell, slowly fading to worry. “Uh oh,” he said. “That’s not a good look.”

She broke eye contact then, casting her gaze down at the ground, afraid that if she looked at him any longer she would break. “What’s wrong?” he asked, and the soft, genuine concern in his voice was enough to make tears prickle at the corners of her eyes. She blinked them away. _Chloé_ had no reason to cry over this. If she let him see how torn up she was, she risked him discovering her identity as well.

With that thought in mind, Chloé closed her eyes and took one deep breath, centering herself. Then she looked up once more, meeting his patient teal eyes with a look strong enough she could pretend it was without fear.

“The brooch in your pocket,” she said, voice steady. “It’s the peacock miraculous, isn’t it?”

It was only a tiny fleeting moment, lasting for less than a second, but she could never have missed it. That tiny flash of panic that crossed his eyes.

Red eyebrows soon knit together in confusion, but it was too late. There wasn’t so much as a whisper from the magic anymore. It was dead.

“What, this?” he asked, voice carefully measured to sound perfectly casual as he pulled the item in question from his pocket. “This is just a family—,”

“Nath.” Face completely void of emotion, he closed his mouth and stared at the black peacock in his hand. “I know.”

She watched as he stared at the brooch a moment longer before finally dawning the most bitter of smiles and slipping it back into his pocket. “I’m impressed, Chloé.” He leaned back against the supply table behind him with his hands in his pockets, observing her—no, _assessing_ her. She recognized the way he glanced her over. She’d seen him do it countless times as Paon right as she was about to strike. He was waiting to see what sort of move she would make. “I’ve never heard of anyone figuring it out before. How did you?” He cocked his head, portraying someone who was perfectly at ease when she knew he was anything but.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said, borrowing some of Queen Bee’s strength to remain steady. “Look, your secret is safe. I just came to tell you that I can’t be friends—or anything else—with you.”

He looked her over for a moment.

“Thank you.”

He meant it. She could see it in his eyes, hear it in his voice. He was genuinely grateful that she would keep his secret, and he didn’t dare ask why for fear that she would take it back. She inwardly sighed in relief, thankful that he hadn’t asked. After all, Chloé Bourgeois, concerned Paris citizen, had no reason to protect him. Queen Bee, on the other hand…

Well, Queen Bee had fallen terribly, tragically, hopelessly in love with him.

Which was why she couldn’t stop herself from voicing the issue that had bothered her from the very beginning.

“You’re not a bad guy, Nath.”

He sighed, crossing his arms over his chest. “I don’t need you to tell me that.”

“So why are you fighting against Paris’s heroes?” she asked, voice a little more charged than she meant it to be. His solid gaze faltered. “Why are you taking orders from a villain?”

She watched him clench and unclench his jaw, staring down at the ground. Those teal eyes were cold as ice, but she could see the fury burning beneath the surface, the torment behind his hardened gaze.

“I have my reasons.”

Pain.

Torture.

Agony.

But above all, resolution.

That was what she saw in that moment, laden thick in those tragically beautiful eyes.

She had to leave. She had to get out of there. Two more seconds spent staring at him like that and she would break. Swallowing down a lump in her throat, Chloé turned on her heel. “Goodbye, Nathaniel,” she said, heading for the door.

Try as she might to get it out of her head, the soft, broken voice that trailed behind her as she left the studio would haunt her sleep for many nights to come, echoing those words that she least wanted to hear on endless repeat.

“Goodbye, Chloé.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song that was his ringtone is [Lock Me Up](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XF_XwFixAg) by The Cab.


	3. Hurts Like Hell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [I found love where it wasn't supposed to be.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yj6V_a1-EUA)
> 
> [I loved and I loved and I lost you. And it hurts like hell.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uil0L-0F4no)
> 
> [I had all and then most of you, some and now none of you.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtlgYxa6BMU)

“I need your help.”

Just four words. But coming from him, she was hopeless to ignore them. Sometimes she wondered if there was a world where she ever said no to him. She imagined that even in that world, she still wouldn’t be able to deny him in that moment. Not when he was calling her after weeks without contact at 3 in the morning in such clear distress. Not when she still so helplessly loved him.

So, Chloé pushed aside any animosity she might have had for being woken up in the middle of the night, for someone she had now tried to cut off twice calling her, or even for someone who she knew to be a super villain coming to her as if they were friends without so much as a second thought. She sat up in her bed, immediately alert and ready.

“Nathaniel? What’s wrong?”

“It’s Duusu.” Her heart stopped for just a second. _Queen Bee_ knew Duusu to be the peacock kwami. _Chloé_ , however, shouldn’t recognize that name. “She’s sick. And I-I don’t know what to do. She’s so weak, she can’t even speak. She’s lost all color in her feathers and she’s cold and she’s just curled up in a ball and she keeps coughing and I don’t know what to do.”

She recognized what he was talking about. Pollen had been sick once, though it wasn’t nearly as bad as what he described. Nonetheless, she would be perfectly fine if she got to Master Fu.

But Chloé didn’t know that.

“Who is Duusu?” she forced herself to ask, hoping she sounded as clueless as she wasn’t. She was already getting up and pulling a pair of pants on, hating that she even had to waste time with this useless question just to protect her own damn identity when he was so clearly distressed. She wouldn’t even be able to calm him and tell him Duusu would be perfectly fine because again _Chloé_ had no reason to know about kwami health!

“Sorry, sorry,” he responded, and she swore she could hear him anxiously pacing over the phone. “Duusu is my kwami. Fuck, you don’t know what that is either. Um. She’s like…the source of the miraculous power. She’s like a small god and I didn’t even know it was possible for gods to _get_ sick and I don’t know what to do, please I need your help.”

“What makes you think I know what to do?” she asked absently as she shuffled through her apartment looking for her car keys.

“I don’t,” he admitted, “but you’re the only person who knows who I am. And I don’t know; you’re rich so maybe you have access to some really amazing doctor, or…veterinarian?” Pollen, who had been roused from her slumber by Chloé’s shuffling and had tuned into the conversation, looked appalled.

“ _Oh he did not just—_ ,”

“Okay, look, I might know someone.” _More like I know exactly the person you need to see but I CAN’T TELL YOU THAT_. “He’s an old physician but he’s also like…” Shit, what sort of excuse could she possibly make for who Master Fu was? “…a spiritual guide. Or something. I don’t know. But if anyone might know what to do, it’s him.”

“I’m willing to try anything,” he responded, already sounding ten times more at ease—not that that was really saying much. He still sounded wracked with anxiety.

“Okay, I’ll be at your studio in five minutes. Be ready to go.”

“Chloé, th—,”

She hung up the phone, already half way down the stairs to the parking garage. She didn’t want to hear his heartfelt gratitude. She couldn’t.

“So who did you say this guy was again?” the artist mumbled from the passenger seat of her car less than ten minutes later.

“He’s…an old physician of sorts…A family friend.”

“And you think he’ll be able to help Duusu?”

Chloé cast a careful glance at the man sitting next to her, her attention pulled toward him by the painful ring in his tone. Even drawn back into a tiny ponytail, a layer of red hair hung in his face, slightly obscuring sad eyes. His gaze remained fixed on the small, shaking figure in his lap. Duusu, the beautiful peacock kwami, lay curled in on herself, an ashen tone coating her usually vibrant blue color. Nathaniel had barely looked away from her since she picked him up, continuously running his thumb over her head in a comforting gesture—the only thing he _could_ do.

She wanted to reassure him. Tell him that she’d seen a sick kwami before and that she knew with upmost certainty that Master Fu would heal her and it would be fine. “I…” but she couldn’t reveal who she was. “I think that if anyone can, it’s him.”

He gave a small grunt of recognition and she cast another worried glance at him. Though it was a painful sight, a part of her almost felt _relieved_ seeing him so saddened, with worry sunken so deep in his eyes. In a way, he looked more like himself than she’d seen him look since collège. It was somehow so much easier to believe that this man who called her at 3 in the morning on the brink of crying was _Nathanie_ _l Kurtzberg_ than the Paon that she knew, or even the Nathaniel she had met at the engagement party. The others…didn’t seem to _feel_ the same way he did—didn’t seem to experience emotions that way. The same way he always had before. He had always been such a sensitive kid.

She wondered if he had stopped feeling as much before or after receiving the peacock miraculous. She wondered if she would ever find out.

There wasn’t even the smallest semblance of shock on Master Fu’s face when they showed up with the long lost peacock kwami spouting some bullshit story about her being an exotic pet from abroad. Hell, if Chloé didn’t know any better, she’d think the man wasn’t even connecting the dots with how absolutely unfazed he seemed.

“Nathaniel you said your name was?” Master Fu asked as he observed the sickly kwami lying before him on the matt in his parlor.

“Yes?” The redhead straightened in his spot on the floor next to her, having been curled in on himself in worry.

Even though it wasn’t directed at her, Chloé could feel the calming effects of the smile Master Fu directed at him, and she could see the way Nathaniel’s shoulders released the slightest bit of tension in response. “There is something I need from the kitchen. Top right cupboard in a green bag. Would you retrieve it please?”

The redhead cast a worried glance at Duusu before nodding and standing up. Chloé bit her tongue as she waited to hear the sound of the door click shut, anticipation and anxiety beating at the inner walls of her mouth, demanding that she explain herself more and more with each long, dragging second that the artist took to leave the room.

Finally, with that definitive click, she burst.

“I’m so sorry, Master Fu. I know I should have told you and the others sooner, but I just couldn’t. He’s really not a bad guy, he’s just wrapped up in this somehow, and I don’t think he actually wants to be using the miraculous for evil, but for some reason he has to and granted I don’t really know why, but—,”

She clasped her mouth shut as he calmly held up a hand to silence her.

“I am the one who chose you, Queen Bee. You have no need to prove your good character to me.” She swallowed down the guilty lump in her throat and gazed down at the sickly kwami, still feeling too ashamed to meet the kind old man’s eyes.

Duusu was no longer lying completely still as she had been during the car ride, now steadily shaking, and Chloé was pretty sure her color had grown further from her naturally vibrant blue to more closely resemble the sky on a rainy morning.

“Is she going to be okay? Pollen wasn’t nearly this bad when she was sick…” Said kwami and Wayzz both appeared out of their respective hiding spots in that moment, drifting toward Duusu with sorrow laden deep in their eyes. They each took a seat near their comrade, and Pollen reached a hand out as if to touch her, but stopped just before she would have made contact, agony settling deep in her expression as she returned her hand to her side.

“Tell me, Queen Bee, did Le Paon reveal his identity to you?”

She looked up at Master Fu again to find him staring down at the kwami with a hard expression, a sea of troubles raging behind his cold grey eyes.

“No,” she replied, “I figured it out on my own.”

His expression darkened further. “Then it is as I feared.”

“What? What’s wrong?”

“Duusu is weak, isn’t she?” Pollen asked, not looking up from her shaking comrade. In all the years that Chloé had been working with the kwami, never had she seen a look of such anguish on Pollen’s face.

“Yes,” Master Fu responded, matching the bee’s sorrow. “The peacock miraculous has been corrupted, weakening the magic—and the _kwami_ —attached to it.”

“What? How can you tell?” Chloé asked, worriedly looking back and forth between the man and the kwamis. Wayzz was the one to answer her.

“Does Le Paon know your identity too?” She shook her head and Wayzz nodded. “That is because the bee miraculous is at its full strength. Magic surrounds each miraculous that prevents the identities of their users from being revealed even with the clearest of evidence. Nothing short of watching a user transform will reveal their identity to another person.”

“You, however,” Master Fu continued, “were able to recognize him despite that magic, something that never could have happened if the miraculous had not been tampered with. Wayzz has been noting hints of dark magic in the air ever since the butterfly miraculous reawakened. It would appear that Papillon has harnessed this dark magic and used it to infect the peacock miraculous, just as he has done with his akumas.”

“So…what do we do?”

Master Fu looked her over a moment and Chloé couldn’t help but shift uncomfortably. She just knew that the man was reading more than met the eye—perhaps more than she even knew about herself—every time he observed her like that.

“Perhaps,” he eventually said, “It would be best for you to keep an eye on Le Paon.”

A seed of guilt sunk in her stomach and she looked down at the floor, hands clenching into fists as she felt an unnerving, unsettling sense of conflicting loyalties drape over her shoulders.

“Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, right?” she asked bitterly.

“And those you love the closest.”

Chloé’s head snapped up, eyes wide and breath caught in her throat right as the door opened once again. Master Fu merely gazed at her with the most understanding of smiles, the warmth in his eyes giving her all the forgiveness she could never ask for. A moment later, he turned his attention back to Nathaniel and continued on with the healing ritual, but Chloé heard none of it, too wrapped up in her own thoughts and replaying his words over and over again in her mind.

Next thing she knew she was stepping outside the massage parlor, rapidly slipping into an awkward silence with the man she had probably the most complicated relationship with on the planet.

Nathaniel was the first to speak, breaking the silence with a jump start. “Oh! I guess I should officially introduce you now. Chloé,” he lifted a hand to indicate to the kwami sitting on his shoulder, now returned to her beautiful royal blue hue, “this is Duusu. Duusu, this is Chloé. She’s the one who brought us here.”

Iridescent dark purple eyes fell upon her then, and in just that one look, Chloé knew that she could hide nothing from the peacock.

“Thank you, Chloé,” she chimed, her voice less nasally than Pollens, but not quite as sweet as Tikki’s. And sad. So very sad.

“I…” she began nervously. “I have some sugar cubes in my purse. Would you like some?”

She knew the kwami understood the message when those purple orbs widened, a tiny smile coming to the creature’s face. “I would love some.” Chloé smiled and held her bag open, and without another word Duusu flew in.

“Wow.” She looked up to see the artist staring at her purse in deep confusion. “I’ve never seen her eat anything but green vegetables. I never would have guessed she enjoyed sugar cubes.” _She doesn’t_ , Chloé thought, _Pollen does_.

“Maybe she’s just really desperate for sustenance after being sick,” Chloé offered, her voice remarkably calm for someone who was continually lying their ass off.

“Yeah, that’s probably it.” Nathaniel scratched the back of his head in a nervous gesture, and she was pretty sure she could see him biting the inside of his cheek in deep thought. “Look, Chloé, I…” He trailed off, staring a hole into the ground. “Thank you,” he finally said. “I know it’s not exactly easy to help a super villain, and I’m sorry for having put you in that position tonight. It won’t happen again.”

Chloé ground her teeth in frustration as she watched the redhead stuff his hands in his pockets and stand there looking guilty and angry and conflicted like she’d never seen before. Master Fu’s words tumbled through her head with the volume up and on endless repeat.

She sighed.

“Look, Red,” she began, looking anywhere but his eyes, “I don’t know what sorts of fucked up circumstances have gotten you where you are, but…I don’t really think of you as a super villain. And…” She finally looked at him then, finding his expression open and curious and waiting. “If you need a friend…I’m here.”

He stared at her a moment longer, still with that unyielding, wide eyed, curious look—as if he was thinking, weighing, considering, but didn’t want her know _what_. Then, finally, he huffed, and a tiny smile came to his lips.

“I have to admit,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck, “I like Red a hell of a lot more than I liked Tomato.” He suddenly looked ten times more tired than he had mere moments before, and she couldn’t help but feel like she had broken through just the slightest bit—just enough that he was willing to show her his fatigue. It wasn’t wrong of her to feel pride in that, right?

Wrong? No. Unwise? …Maybe.

Next contact arose one day less than an hour after an akuma attack that left Chloé fuming. When she saw his contact information decorating her buzzing phone, she had half a mind to throw the thing across the room. But, because she was weak and the other half of her mind was stronger, she answered.

“Hello?”

“I’m an asshole.” _Yes you are_ , she thought, grinding her teeth in an effort to not say it out loud. She hoped he didn’t hear the growl in her voice as she responded.

“Why?”

“It’s uh…kind of a long story. And I kind of want to…talk about it. Is your offer still open?”

She sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose in frustration. She should have just said no and not indulged her undying curiosity about the inner workings of his mind. But she couldn’t deny that she was dying to know what was going through his mind, both then and all along the way.

An hour later she sat across the counter from him in his apartment, trying to keep calm as she sipped at the glass of wine he had given her. The artist nearly appeared to be the image of calm, but she didn’t miss the movement in his cheek that indicated he was chewing on it as he moved about the kitchen, getting cooking materials out for who knows what.

“You really don’t have to make me dinner,” she said, partially out of caution for what might happen if she stayed for more than one glass of wine and partially out of worry for the anxious redhead who had barely spoken ten words since she got there.

He glanced up at her, pursing his lips. “And just rant to you about all the stupid shit I’ve been doing as a supervillain without even giving you food? I’m not _that_ fuckboy.”

“You admit that you are _a_ fuckboy though?”

The corners of his lips tilted up into a smile for the first time that night and she couldn’t help but pride herself a little bit once again. “Of course,” he said. “I said sex with my school bully and then tried to get her to be friends with benefits with me, while hiding my secret identity as a _supervillain_ from her, all less than a week after breaking up with my…um…” That smile faded again. “Well, okay. That’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about.”

She didn’t say anything, just raised her brows in a silent question as she tried to cover whatever expression she might have been wearing with the wine glass.

He sucked in a deep breath and exhaled as he lit the stove to get some butter melting in a frying pan.

“So uh…yeah, there’s really no good way to say this. I’m just gonna have to dive in. I was sort of…um…involved with…” he looked up at her nervously and Chloé tried to steel her expression for the name to come. “…Queen Bee.”

_Okay, just like you practiced on the way here._

“You…What?”

He looked away and scratched the back of his head nervously. _Nailed it._

“Yeah, um…when I told you I had just gone through a break up, it was…with her.”

“O-Oh,” she forced herself to stutter. _Brows raised. Eyes wide and doe-like. Blink. Blink again._

He glanced at her uneasily. “You seem…really calm about this.”

_Fuck_.

“I guess I’m just…shocked. I mean, isn’t she supposed to be a hero?”

His head snapped up and for a moment, Chloé could see Paon’s fighting face in his features.

“She _is_ a hero!” She didn’t have to pretend to flinch away in surprise then. He immediately backed down, turning to the fridge to get out some vegetables. “Sorry. Sorry. It’s just… I don’t want you thinking that she’s any less of a hero or any less _good_ for being with me.” A small warmth spread through her hearing him defend her. He pressed his lips together in a frown as he washed off some carrots. “I didn’t really…making it easy for her to turn me away.” He sighed. “You know, because I’m an asshole.”

“What do you mean?” she asked as he got out a knife.

“Well…due to the powers of the peacock miraculous, I kind of had an unfair advantage.” He frowned down at the carrots he was slicing. “I knew from the beginning that she was attracted to me and I took advantage of that. I was able to use the miraculous ability to read her emotions every time I was near her and that allowed me to learn exactly how to…play her. Like some sort of instrument.” He paused his movements to drop his head in shame. “Jeez, that makes it sound so much worse than it is. Look,” he said, raising his head to stare her dead in the eye, waving his knife in the air in the process, “I want to make it clear that I really care about her.” A bubbling of butterflies fluttered through her stomach. Sure, she had somewhat known that, but to hear him saying it so explicitly was something else entirely. “I just, you know, couldn’t tell her that. Because the entire time we were still supposed to be enemies.”

“Did anyone else know?” she asked, genuinely curious if he had ever told anyone. Especially curious if Papillon knew.

“Not to my knowledge. It’s possible she told someone, but given how conflicted she constantly felt about it, I doubt it.”

She took a sip of wine, just watching him prepare the carrots as she mulled over the question forming in her mind. She knew it wasn’t helpful, solely from her curiosity and a bit of spite, but she couldn’t help herself. “Nath…if you knew how she felt about it, why did you keep seeing her?”

To her surprise, he smiled. It was a sad smile, complete with a self-deprecating huff of laughter as he began chopping an onion.

“Because I’m selfish. Being with Queen Bee was like a blast of fresh air amidst a sea of fog. Her energy—her _being_ —spoke to me on a level that I could never explain to someone who hasn’t used the peacock miraculous. And it was…nothing short of amazing. I had to have it—I had to have _her_ —even if it was eating away at her. Because,” he somewhat violently smacked his knife through the onion, “I’m an asshole.”

She was glad he wasn’t looking at her in that moment, focusing his tormented glare on transferring the vegetables in front of him to the frying pan instead. She was glad that he couldn’t see the heartbreak in her eyes, the torment of wondering what could’ve been if they had met under different circumstances, but above all, the complete lack of anger that she should have had towards him.

“Yeah,” she eventually said, forcing herself back into her act. “Yeah, you kind of are. So why did you call me today?” she asked, able to harness some of that anger from earlier. Nathaniel took a deep breath and let it out in a heavy sigh as he washed off some mushrooms.

“Well, I, uh, did another selfish thing today. Toward her.”

“During the akuma attack?”

“Yeah, um…” A small blush rose to his cheeks, and Chloé clenched her jaw tight as she noticed the little tiny smirk threatening at his lips. The bitch wasn’t even sorry for what he did. “I was kind of caught in the middle of it, as Nathaniel, and she saved me, not realizing who I was.” _No, I saved you knowing full well who you were_. “She flew me away from the danger, and when she set me down, I…” _Oh yes, Nathanie_ _l, do tell the class what you’ve done._ “…I kissed her.”

Chloé sucked in a deep breath and let it out slow, trying her best not to explode in anger.

“You’re an asshole.”

He groaned, burying his face in his hands. “I _know_. I just couldn’t help myself. She was right there, and when she saved me she put her arms around me and she felt so…familiar and…right.” She hated the warm feeling in her stomach that tumbled in agreement. “Cupping her face in my hands and kissing her before she flew away just felt so…natural. And…call me crazy, but I swear she felt it too.”

Chloé sighed. He was right. It did feel natural, for her too. Everything about him, everything about being with him always felt so infuriatingly _natural_ to the point that her efforts to space herself from him felt like an uphill battle against her own _being_.

“I think that’s what makes this breakup so damn hard,” he continued. “I know that on some level…she doesn’t want it either.” _Spot on_. He laughed a bitter laugh as he moved his now sliced mushrooms into the frying pan with the other vegetables. “That’s kind of how it was the entire time, though, admittedly. Every time I was with her, I could feel how much I was hurting her, how much turmoil I had put her in.” His eyes were full of sorrow as he watched the vegetables start to sizzle. “But I could also feel how she didn’t want to give me up just as much as I didn’t want to give her up.”

She watched him as he absently pushed the vegetables around the pan with a wooden spoon. She felt cold. So achingly cold. Lonely and guilty and cold.

This would all be so much simpler if he wasn’t _literally her enemy_. He wasn’t even a bad person, for crying out loud! So _why?_ Why did things have to be this way?

She took another sip of wine before speaking. “Nathaniel?”

He looked up at her from under a veil of scarlet hair.

“Why are you a villain?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I changed the name of the fic, since Hate Square wasn't aesthetic enough for me, haha. The new name is a reference to the song I Found by Amber Run, which is a really great song for this fic, I definitely recommend you give it a listen. Also, you may have noticed that this is now part of a "series" called Hate Square. Basically, I will sometimes write little side bits that belong in this story but that I couldn't include for whatever reason. Right now, if you look you'll find some smut that I didn't want to include because Where It Wasn't Supposed To Be is going to remain an M-rated fic, not E-rated. But eventually the Hate Square series will likely include some side drabbles that aren't smut, such as some bits from Nath's pov that can't be included in the main fic since it's strictly Chloe's pov. So look forward to that! <3


	4. Waves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [There is a swelling storm and I’m caught up in the middle of it all. And it takes control of the person that I thought I was. The boy I used to know.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAM1wyQJsto)
> 
>  
> 
> [You brought out the best of me, a part of me I’d never seen.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtf7hC17IBM)
> 
>  
> 
> [We’re both a little bit lonely and a little bit scared tonight.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlSCkanUJQw)

 

“Motherfucker, you popped one of my buttons off.” Chloé had her back turned to him in the dark room as she put her blouse back on. She made a mental note to ask Marinette to fix it later. What would she say though? Grinding her teeth, she tried to think of some excuse as to why her button would have popped off. She couldn’t exactly tell Marinette—aka _Ladybug_ —that the reason her blouse was ruined was because of—

Le Paon’s hands connected with her waist, sneaking up under her shirt as she finished fastening what buttons it still had. “Sorry,” he mumbled into her neck, placing soft kisses between words, “I have a hard time controlling myself once I get my hands on you.”

She sighed, leaning into him as he began to gently sway, rocking them side to side. Moments like this were few and far between. Still moments. Quiet moments. Serene moments when they weren’t in a rush and when they weren’t distracted by more pressing matters. Moments where they could let their heart rates settle again and caress each other in a way that wasn’t heated or passionate, but tender.

The most dangerous moments. Moments of love.

“You don’t sound very sorry.” His only response to that was to hum, as if pondering the statement. The vibrations danced along her skin, mixing a soft moan in with her laugh. “Maybe you’d be more sorry if you knew how much it cost.”

She could feel his smile against her shoulder. “Wearing your best for me, Bee?”

She scoffed, reaching a hand up to sift her fingers through his hair. “You wish. This top is from last year. As if I would let you touch anything from last spring, _let alone_ this summer’s Agreste line.”

She could feel Paon’s chuckle rumble through his chest. “So you’re a fashion person, huh?”

Chloé’s fingers stilled in the middle of combing through some of the tangles she had made in his hair. Paon stopped swaying soon after. “Sorry,” he said, keeping his voice light and casual even though she could hear the caution in it, “I shouldn’t ask things like that, huh?”

A moment later, she continued brushing her fingers through his hair, her other arm settling over the one wrapped around her waist.

“I’m not a fashion person,” she said, continuing on as if nothing had happened. “But I’ve always considered myself someone with…refined taste.”

Paon began his gentle sway again and she could feel him trying to hide a smile in the crook of her neck. He kissed it to cover it up. “I’ll have to remember that.”

Chloé jolted awake, her blood rushing and body screaming as if from a nightmare. She groaned and settled back down into the pillow a second later as her senses returned to her.

That was no nightmare. Worse, it was a memory.

She closed her eyes, trying to push it from her mind. It was still dark out. Maybe she could get another hour or two of sleep before her alarm went off.

Chloé shifted uncomfortably in the bed, disliking the way her shoulders settled on the mattress. She opened her eyes and frowned at the ceiling. Why did her memory foam feel so hard on her muscles?

Then realized that it wasn’t her ceiling.

Oh right.

The blonde turned to find only empty sheets by her side. She sat up and looked around the small apartment. Likewise empty. Not a single redhead in sight.

“He’s downstairs,” a soft, twinkling voice informed her. Duusu and Pollen appeared then, coming out of nowhere in that way that kwamis always did, and floated up next to her.

“Do you have any sugar cubes with you?” Pollen’s nasally voice followed. Chloé frowned and rubbed her head, glancing around the room. In the dim light from the street lamps trickling through the windows, she could make out her pants on the floor over near the desk, her bra next to Nath’s shirt near the foot of the bed, and her thong on the floor next to her, but couldn’t seem to catch sight of her white designer handbag.

“There should be some in my purse, if you can find it,” she eventually responded. Pollen nodded and flitted off to search without another word. Duusu, on the other hand, settled down onto Chloé’s knee, looking up at her with those ever observant, wise, and open violet eyes.

“You understand now, don’t you?”

She peered down at the kwami.

Years of living with the sassy but ethereal Pollen, learning from the all-knowing Wayzz, and having brief interactions with the mischievous Trixx, the sardonic Plagg and the sweet Tikki hadn’t prepared her in the slightest for facing the peacock kwami. It seemed that every time Chloé fell under that deep purple gaze, her soul itself was being bared, dragged out to the surface, but simultaneously surrounded in subtle but thick layers of acceptance and comfort. As if the kwami not only knew absolutely _everything_ about Chloé’s true self—things she may not even know about herself—but she also _accepted_ her for all of it, and let her feel safe while so strangely exposed.

It was the most comforting sense of discomfort Chloé had ever experienced.

Chloé took a deep breath and let it out slow. Duusu need say no more. She knew exactly what she was referring to.

 _“Why are you a villain?”_ The question hung in the air.

Nathaniel pursed his lips, looking back down at the sizzling vegetables in front of him in frustration. Chloé nearly opened her mouth to speak again. She was going to say something like, ‘you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,’ or, ‘sorry, I shouldn’t ask,’ but she bit her tongue. She knew he was perfectly capable of refusing to answer if he really didn’t want to, and she would _not_ stand in her own way anymore. She really wanted a fucking explanation already.

So she clamped her mouth shut. She would not allow herself to take her question back. Not now.

She sat patiently sipping her wine as he stood deep in thought, gnawing the inside of his cheek. He eventually turned his intense scowl to a package of noodles and glared at them as he threw them in with the vegetables.

 _Ah,_ Chloé thought, _so it’s stir fry._ She watched him push the noodles around the pan and haphazardly throw in soy sauce and some spices with what looked like absolutely no rhyme or reason to the process. He even poured in some brown sugar and Chloé thought he might have gone mad, mixing up the dish he was cooking with a baked good somehow.

But the longer the ingredients all sizzled together, the more the kitchen started to fill with the delicious aroma of teriyaki stir fry. The vegetables were all starting to look well-cooked when her stomach emitted a tiny whine to remind her that the akuma attack had carried right through her lunch break.

“Do you remember when you became Antibug?” Chloé snapped to attention at the intrusion of his voice. She wasn’t sure how long the silence had stretched on by then, though it must have been a while, because those noodles were looking nearly done.

Her brow creased. “Some of it, yeah.” Bits and pieces that had come back to her in the days following, but never all of it. The memory remained murky to that day.

“The moment you were akumatized?”

His harsh, bitter gaze stayed trained on the sizzling pan in front of him. A discomforting chill settled over her as she observed his suddenly cold demeanor. “Yeah.”

“Do you remember when you heard his voice echo through your ears? And how you were just so upset in the moment that even if you knew he was on the bad side, you were just so willing to sell your soul to him for the power he promised?”

Chloé bit her lip and looked down at her red wine as she swirled it around the glass, disliking where this was going. “Yeah,” she admitted quietly. Memories of betrayal and hurt and vengeance flashed through her mind. Memories of just having been so utterly wronged by Ladybug in that moment and being blinded by her emotions as she shoved all sense aside just to cater to that rage.

“And remember how you thought that you could be the exception?”

She paused, eyes slowly rising to him.

This whole time, in all the years since she had been akumatized, never had she heard a single akuma victim express the desire to be the exception. Not on the Ladyblog, not on news interviews, not even in the casual day to day conversations that they all shared as a part of life. No one had ever shared that with her before.

When Papillon had granted her power, there had been this itch, this irresistible idea that she could be different from all the others. That she could succeed in bringing down Ladybug and Chat Noir and that _when_ she did, she would have staked her claim at the top of the hero hierarchy. And that then, she would be the hero Paris looked up to.

The exception to Papillon’s success rate.

The hero.

She had long believed it to be an experience more specific to her own akumatization, and due to her own shame regarding the entire incident, never had she wanted to share it with anyone. But perhaps it was more of a common experience than she thought.

“You too?” she whispered.

He nodded. “Believe it or not, every akuma villain feels that way.”

Chloé straightened in surprise. “I never knew.”

“Neither did I until I started reading them with the peacock miraculous.” Nathaniel pressed his lips together then in a pained frown, still not looking up from his cooking. “Imagine receiving an offer like that again. Only it’s amplified tenfold and this time it isn’t just another akuma, but an actual tangible _miraculous_. An item of magic that can grant you definite, real, _lasting_ abilities rather than the fleeting magic of the butterfly. Tell me, Chloé,” he looked straight at her then, ice cold gaze harsh, and she just about felt the ground fall out from underneath her, “would you be able to say no?”

She couldn’t feel her body. She felt like a head floating in space, only held present by the man standing there keeping his gaze fixed solid on her. When she answered, her voice was quiet, nearly a whisper. “I don’t know.”

He looked away again and Chloé felt herself collapse from the release of his hold. “As strong willed as you are, the answer is no, I promise you. Remember what Marinette told us about how Madame Bustier did her best to resist the akuma? That was just a little butterfly. Imagine an entire artifact of power in itself. Imagine the hints of ability you could taste as it called you into its grasp. Imagine the tantalizing prospect of a real chance to do something, to make change, dancing in front of you _within reach_. Imagine _knowing_ that by receiving this offer, you _are_ the exception.” He smiled bitterly. “I had less of a choice in becoming Le Paon as I did Evillustrator.”

He turned off the burner a moment later and moved on to get out bowls, functioning as if everything were business as usual even while his eyes bore a look of such intense pain. It ached to see him like that. Not just to see the very real, very deeply laden torment that the man held, but to be able to see the effects of carrying that around with him every minute of every day, to the point that it’s become his normal, functioning status quo. A deeply ingrained torture and bitterness.

Seeing it was like an icicle straight through the heart.

Even though she knew it would only hurt more, she couldn’t hold back from asking the next question that rose to thought.

“So why do you continue?”

_Ouch._

Nathaniel had just been about to dish some stir fry into a bowl, but his movements froze. The effect of her question was immediately visible in the pained expression that crossed his features. She may as well have just punched him in the gut. It was as if she had managed to pinpoint the absolute worst part of his entire situation and shoved it in his face.

She was pretty that was exactly what she had done.

“I-I’m sorry,” she immediately said, unable to stop herself anymore. “You don’t have to answer that if you don’t—,”

“I have to.”

Chloé bit her lip, swallowing her words and waiting in the tense silence that fell over them. Nathaniel sighed and set down the bowl, his shoulders dropping and chest deflating as he turned exhausted, tormented eyes toward her.

“I have to,” he repeated, voice shallow, almost ragged. A moment later, Duusu was on his shoulder, nestling into the crook of his neck to comfort him as best she could. Watching the way the kwami flew to his aide, she understood. While Chloé might wonder for days on end what it was that kept him dawning the mask, she understood that whatever it was left him no choice.

From her place down on her knee, Duusu watched her with expectant eyes, and Chloé slowly nodded with downcast eyes. “Yeah, I do.”

“He’s not a bad guy,” the kwami said, her voice gentle but insistent. “Please, Queen Bee. Help him.”

Chloé nodded, and even though she had no idea how she was going to solve this, “I will,” she promised.

Those violet eyes softened and the kwami graced her with the most sad and gentle of smiles.

“You love him, don’t you?” Chloé bit her lip to keep it from trembling as she nodded in response. “He loves you too.”

“I know he does.”

Duusu said nothing more, only looking up at her with that signature sad smile she had. Then the kwami flew up to place her paws on Chloé’s skin and press her forehead into hers. A warm tear escaped and ran a gentle path down Chloé’s cheek as she sighed into the gesture. She could feel that familiar trickle of healing magic emitting from the tiny god that Pollen always gave her when she was at her worst. _The kwami touch,_ as Alya liked to call it.

A moment later, the little blur of blue and purple had danced off into the dark, likely to go assist Pollen in her search for sugar cubes. Over in the corner, Chloé could make out a soft light coming from downstairs. She scowled and looked at the clock on the bedside table. 4:56am. Was he really painting at this ungodly hour?

Sighing, Chloé swiped a finger under her eyes to quickly clean up any smudged makeup. She swung her feet over the edge of the bed, hissing as they made contact with the cold tile floor. Then she collected the soft flannel blanket from the bed and wrapped it around her naked body to make her way to the stairwell.

The sharp industrial lights of Nathaniel’s art studio hurt more and more as Chloé made her way downstairs. Finally stepping foot on the ground floor, she spotted him—the artist—sitting up straight in only a pair of loose pajama pants, with both hands outreached toward a canvas, fingers each sporting a generous layer of paint. From where she stood in the corner, the man’s bare back was to her, allowing her to admire him in his intense focus without being noticed.

She smiled to herself as she leaned against the doorway. She really loved watching him work.

Then she realized what he was painting.

Sitting on the small couch in his apartment earlier that night, she had sipped at her glass of _water_ (she thought it might be a good idea to try being sober around him for once) while he talked about the things he had never been able to unpack to anyone except Duusu.

He told her about how much he hates akumas because they exude pure, unfiltered rage and negativity that bleed into him when he’s Le Paon whether he wants them to or not. He told her about how that ability of the peacock miraculous forced him over time to steel his emotions. How that’s a good thing when it comes to staying level headed as Le Paon despite the constant absorption of others’ emotions. How he hates that it’s changed who he is and how he acts as Nathaniel too.

And then she had asked a self-indulgent question.

“What about Queen Bee? How does it feel to…fight her?” The redhead perked up at that, chest swelling with a deep breath and eyes suddenly sparking with a bright, living energy.

“Coming from akumas, who muddle through thick, sickened angst… all of the miraculous holders are a breath of fresh air. But Bee…” The very sight of his smile in that moment alone was enough to simultaneously fill her heart and crush it. He paused and looked to be lost in a pleasant thought of some sort before he turned to face her, folding his legs underneath him in a crisscross position and launching into a long explanation.

“You see,” he began, “every person has their own specific emotional signature that I can _feel_ as Le Paon. A distinct impression that’s like a reflection of their core essence. And while all of the heroes’ energies are nothing short of spectacular, Queen Bee’s is…” she could have sworn there were stars in his eyes, _“breathtaking.”_

The rest of his words were accompanied by an almost _inspired_ smile. “The first time I fought Queen Bee, her energy blindsided me. It coursed with wrath, cunning, and raw _power._ She fights with a ferocity and relentless endurance that stems from a deeply rooted need to protect what she has. And what she has is… _everything_. She is the queen, all of Paris her subjects, and she will stop at nothing to guard what is hers.

“But when I read a little deeper, what I found underneath was what enthralled me.

“Underneath her mask is a lackluster world. The queen’s world is boring, formulaic, and trodden. In that world she’s like a bird trapped in its cage; sad and alone and left with no purpose. That’s why her passion emerges as Queen Bee. Every battle is akin to the cage door opening up, unleashing the exhilaration and vigor she’s always craved. She feels useful and fulfilled, her duty as Paris’s hero finally giving her purpose and drive…”

He trailed off for a moment, lost in thought, then smiled softly. “That was something I never expected to find with the peacock’s intuition: a window into a soul that complemented my own. _That_ was what blindsided me. Her passion emerged differently from mine, but it came from a similar source, and it _burned._ It burned so hot a single touch could sear. Her energy was a live, crackling, dancing flame and to _feel_ it was absolute _rapture.”_

He smiled sheepishly then and leaned forward, rolling up his sleeves. She leaned forward and looked closely as he pointed to certain spots on his skin—small, barely perceptible white lines. “This one, this one, and this one are all from my first fight with her. I um—,” he looked away as if ashamed, but he was smiling all the while, “—I fought really badly that time. Not because I couldn’t fight better, but because every time she came close enough to hit me, she was also so close that my head went swimming in the pure intoxication that was _her.”_

She watched him as he leaned back again, eyes staring off and smile wistful. She remembered that first fight—back before they had their dance. She had thought he just got a lot better at dodging immediately after, but this…

“I never _wanted_ to fight her. Granted, I didn’t want to fight any of them, but _especially_ her. But,” his tone shifted to a more serious note then as he glanced over at Duusu, sleeping soundly on a pillow, “I learned to, if nothing else just so that Duusu wouldn’t cry over my wounds every night.” He sucked in a deep breath and let it out slow. “Just like with the akumas, I learned to set aside the emotions that flooded my senses, even when their effect was pure bliss.”

Chloé sighed from her place in the corner of the room and watched him paint her. This whole time, she’d known Paon felt something serious for her, but _this?_ To learn that it was her soul—her absolute emotional core—that he had fallen in love with and not even her mask?

He loved her in probably the truest form anyone ever possibly could. And he didn’t even know it was her.

Nathaniel’s index finger—coated in bright yellow paint that perfectly matched that of her suit—drew the curve of her shoulder before switching to the black paint on his middle finger to run down the length of her arm. He then dragged his fingers in from that outline, spreading the thin layer of paint just the slightest bit, and she realized what he was doing. He wasn’t going to fill in the outline of Queen Bee with a full layer of paint; instead, he was only using color to shade the edges.

She never thought she would see a professional artist finger painting, much less something so good.

His ring finger reached up and traced the light blonde of her hair back behind her ear and she could almost feel his nails brushing her forehead. Then his pinky outlined her cheeks and she felt the ghost warmth of his palm caress the side of her face.

She decided to make her presence known then, stepping forward and stopping at his right. She was sure he had noticed her, but he didn’t say anything, just kept painting.

“Couldn’t sleep?” she asked quietly, voice ringing in the silent night.

He shrugged. “It’s normal for me.”

Mindlessly, he reached up to push some hair from his face, using the back of his wrist to avoid the paint that coated his fingers. She sighed a tiny laugh as those strands of red immediately fell right back in his eyes. It looked like he forgot to tie his hair back before working.

Still holding the blanket close to her body with her right hand, she reached out her left to gently pull his bangs back behind his ear. A small smile appeared at the corner of his mouth and he murmured, “thanks.”

She said nothing, but settled into a steady, calming rhythm of brushing her fingers through his hair.

“Did you know that the butterfly and peacock miraculous are meant for good, just like the ladybug, black cat, bee and fox?” he had asked her earlier that night. She had watched as he pulled the peacock miraculous out of his pocket and stared at it weighing heavy in his palm. That gave her pause. Because now that she knew what she was looking at, she realized how horridly _wrong_ it looked.

The comb in her hair, the pendant hanging from Alya’s neck, the ring on Adrien’s finger, and the earrings in Marinette’s ears; when awake and deactivated, they all took on a pristine, unassuming silver. But the brooch that Nathaniel held then shone glossy, sinister pitch black. She unconsciously pulled her feet in closer to her body, as if scared to touch such a corrupted object.

“Papillon takes the pure, good power of the butterflies and distorts it,” he continued. “I’ve watched him do it. The butterfly miraculous gives him a room full of glowing, beautiful butterflies to bestow the powers of a hero upon anyone he chooses. But when the time comes, he holds the butterfly in his palm and…” Nathaniel cupped his hands around the peacock miraculous, obscuring it from vision, _“infects_ it. With dark magic. Changes it from the beautiful being that it’s meant to be into something _awful._ Then what comes out is an akuma, not a butterfly.” Nathaniel paused before opening his hands again. “He did that to the peacock miraculous too. He infected it with dark magic and now it feels like being akumatized every time I transform. That surge of rage, that rush of power… Every single time.”

She got a quick glimpse of his sour, tormented expression before a veil of red hair fell in the way, obscuring his face. He didn’t pay it any mind, seemingly too lost in his thoughts to notice.

Chloé approached then, crossing from her side of the couch to reach forward and gently pull his hair back. He sat up straight and faced her, the wall of sorrow shattering from his eyes as he was pulled back into the moment. Then he smiled softly as she hooked the strands back behind his ear.

“You look like her,” he said softly. She paused, sitting back on her heels as he continued. “I noticed it when I drew you the other day.”

“You…” she trailed off, all thought slowing to a stop as she tried to process what she was hearing. “You drew me?” _Me? Chloé?_

He looked away with a slight smile and a shrug. “It’s no big deal,” he said. “I draw everyone in my life.” Then he scratched the back of his head and let out a nervous chuckle. “But it was funny, I was coloring in your hair and your eyes and I realized I—,” teal connected with blue once again, accompanied by a sheepish smile, “—I have a type.”

“You… You drew me,” she repeated, hung up on the fact that he had drawn _her—_ as in _Chloé,_ not _Queen Bee,_ the one he was in love with.

He laughed, seeming to find her disbelief amusing. “Yeah. I’ve drawn you a few times now actually.” He watched her with a bemused smile and she wondered what sort of face she was making as her thoughts created a turbulent storm of flattery, shock, and confusion. “Do you want to see them?”

She nodded, endlessly curious what she would look like in Nathaniel’s hand.

A moment later he was leading her over to his desk, littered with hoards of pencil sketches. As he shuffled through them, she couldn’t help but notice that a fair deal of them were full body sketches of all of Paris’s heroes (thought Queen Bee was definitely winning) as well as some akumas. She had to hide a smile as she even caught a glimpse of a detailed Circus Freak—the akuma Le Paon had always referenced as his favorite for giving him the opening he’d needed with her.

“Here they are,” he said, handing her a small stack of course paper.

The one on top wasn’t so much one sketch as it was an idea board of five or six sketches, all of her. There were various depictions of her face making different expressions, a rough sketch of her drinking straight from a bottle of wine, and one of her from the side staring straight forward with her hands on a steering wheel.

The second page was a single upper-body portrait, so fully detailed that she wondered if he had stalked her on social media for references because it looked so _real._ She was depicted looking straight at the (metaphorical) camera with a sort of suspicious scowl on her face, leaning her elbows on the counter and holding a coffee mug in her hands. Her hair was down and her makeup was slightly smudged and she even had a couple of faded, barely visible hickies. The sketch was primarily in pencil, but he seemed to have taken colored pencils to her hair and eyes specifically, making them pop in vibrant color. She was pretty sure there was even a slight dusting of pink on her cheeks.

The next was a full body image of her profile, showing her walking with a hand held close to her chest as she spoke. This one had been penned and fully colored in (with what sort of art tool, she couldn’t tell; maybe something like watercolor). Light shone on her from what she assumed was a nearby lantern or something, because the color and shading made it look like night time. She flipped back to the previous sketch and realized she was wearing the same thing in both of them—the black v-neck shirt and long yellow cardigan she had worn to Adrien and Marinette’s engagement party. Though in this picture, her hair was still up in its ponytail and the hickies on her neck weren’t visible.

In the fourth she was wearing a different outfit. They were her work clothes actually, complete with office heels, suit pants, a nice button up top, and a blazer. The full-body picture was almost heartbreaking, showing her with her fists balled at her sides, standing rock solid with a determined but…sad look in her eyes.

“These are…real,” she eventually whispered, flipping between them.

“Yeah,” he murmured back. “Some images just get stuck in my head throughout the day, so I draw them.”

“Why?”

She felt his arm brush hers as he shrugged. “A lot of the time it’s when something or someone makes me feel something.”

She paged through them again in turn as she spoke. “Driving back from Master Fu’s parlor, drinking at the party,” she flipped to the upper body one, “talking while you made waffles,” to the business suit one, “confronting you about being Le Paon,” and then to the talking one at night, “but this one?” She looked up and it wasn’t until then that she realized how close together they were standing. Mere centimeters away, he was watching her with a soft smile and a warm look in those beautiful eyes.

Suddenly she was very aware of her beating heart.

His smile widened as he looked down at the drawing. “You might not remember that one very well. That was when we were walking back here from the party.”

“How did that make you feel something?”

He chuckled softly. “Do you remember what we talked about while walking?” She frowned as she tried to recall, but the memory was fuzzy. “We played fuck marry kill.”

“Oh no.”

He laughed a little harder. “And I gave you Ladybug, Chat Noir, and Le Paon.”

“What’d I say?” she asked, already cringing.

“You said, and I quote, ‘Easy. Fuck Paon, marry Ladybug, kill Chat Noir.’ I immediately asked, obviously, why you wouldn’t kill the villain, and you said…” he slowed down then, and suddenly he wasn’t looking at her in that casual, joking way he usually did, instead gazing at her with warmth and admiration in a way that had butterflies fluttering through her stomach. He huffed a tiny laugh. “Well, first you pointed out that you would end up killing Chat Noir for his puns anyway, but then you added in a surprisingly gentle voice that…Paon isn’t that bad.”

She was absolutely captured by those smoldering teal eyes then as they burned into her. She could feel heat radiating from his body and smell the spiced citrus scent of his body wash and she was very quickly learning that even completely sober, his presence was still absolutely intoxicating to her. “Tell me, Chloé,” he whispered, “why did you say that?”

He was drawing in closer, and she was helpless to stop herself from being pulled in by his magnetic field. “Because,” she whispered back, eyes drifting down to his lips as he approached, “Paon isn’t bad at all.”

Now she could smell that spiced citrus scent on the blanket she held close as she stood there watching him paint in comfortable silence.

“Why finger painting?” She eventually asked.

His voice was distant as he answered, stroking a pink finger over her lips as he put on what looked like final touches. “It’s the only way I can touch her.”

The paint-coated fist around her heart squeezed even tighter.

A moment later, he dropped his hands and sat back to stare at the painting. Queen Bee looked up at them with bright, daring blue eyes and a confident smirk. She looked powerful and radiant, intimidating but not frightening, and caring but not soft.

Was this how he saw her? So…incredible?

Nathaniel reached out for a small hand towel sitting nearby and before she could think about what she was doing, Chloé had taken his wrist. He looked up at her then for the first time since she had joined him, and she watched as he took in the sight of her, naked and covered only by a blanket from his bed, hair down and a mess, and dotted with fresh hickies he had given her.

Holding his hand in her left, she let go with her right. Those teal eyes seared her skin as they watched the blanket fall away and pool at her feet. Then they observed as she guided his hand to her body. He had an intent, engrossed sort of fascination in his gaze as he stroked his thumb over her hip bone, smearing paint across her skin.

Those eyes slowly traversed their way back up to hers as she stepped forward and spread one leg across his lap to straddle him, taking Queen Bee’s place in his view. Then she held his gaze as she reached out to take his other hand and place it on her body. _It’s me,_ she thought as he made a matching line on her other hip. _You’re touching **me.**_ He reached up and ran his fingers along her ribcage, coating her in Queen Bee’s colors. _Painting **me.**_

She ran her fingers back through his hair before hooking her hands behind his neck and pulling him in toward her.

 _I’m right here,_ her mind screamed as their lips connected. _And I love you too._


End file.
